Motivating the unmotivated by dr ram l prasad for publication

Motivating the Unmotivated

About the Author Dr. Ram Lakhan Prasad There is a relatively small segment of HR leaders in the commercial and industrial world; individuals who seem able to build harmonious relationships, trust, and rapport with almost anyone, and then are able to broker the relationships and make connections between people, creating partnerships and alliances, and motivating forward momentum to get things done.

Dr Ram Lakhan Prasad is one of those people, and getting things done and driving results through collaboration, partnership and relationship from his experience as Director of Human Resources of a 500 plus company is what he is all about. With an enthusiastic and genuinely friendly attitude, Dr Prasad radiates a sincere passion for delivering value and benefits to his clients.

A teacher by training, he earned his professional qualifications from reputable tertiary institutions in UK, USA, Fiji, Australia, UK and NZ. After twelve years of teaching, ten years as a curriculum developer, advisor and evaluator, he joined an internationally recognized enterprise as the Director of Human Resources. He was responsible for acquisition, development and management of over five hundred employees.

His contributions centered on spearheading development and delivery of training and management programmes for various sections of the enterprise. Throughout it all, Dr Prasad has repeatedly proved his ability to lead through diverse and challenging situations.

Today, although Dr Prasad has retired from all active involvement, he continues to do consulting work and providing advisory services as part of the i-HR Consulting Sdn Bhd Advisory Board to various organizations. He also spends time producing professional material and doing creative work on specific as well as general issues. His professional books, novels, short stories, poems and other articles are all published in various forms.

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One of his revealing services has been to motivate and inspire young entrepreneurs and youths involved in community services.

For him any motivation minus workable strategies is equal to frustration. So he feels that continuous adjustment and addition to our profile make us an ardent achiever and sharpen our executive, social and all other instincts.

Dr Ram Lakhan Prasad

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Table of Contents Introduction

7 st

Motivation For 21 Century

8

Self Development

13

Positive Thinking

18

Demand For Perfection

23

Strengths And Opportunities

28

Freedom To Think Big

32

The Real Winners

37

Understanding Our Own Life And The Life Of Our Workers

40

Let Us Be Creative

44

Your Natural Drive

47

Proper Planning Pays

51

The Power of Imagination

55

Learn to Direct Yourself

59

Control Your Life

62

Positive Mental Attitude

66

Building Self-Confidence

70

Affirmation Of Our Commitment

74

Clear and Creative Thinking

78

Relax and Succeed.

82

Happiness is Helpful

85

Discover Yourself and Win

90

Turn Your Liabilities into Assets

95

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What Is Holding You Back?

100

Helpful Attachments What Could Be Our Key To Success At Our Workplace What Are Some Of Our Liabilities?

Symptoms Of Failure Turn Your Failure Into Success Failure Means An Inadequate Self-Image Expect A Miracle In Your Life

112 112 113 114 114 115 116

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Motivation Techniques For the 21st Century Managers

A Collection of Lectures presented by Dr Ram L Prasad, Human Resource Director, Consultant and Educationist.

These are the experiences of a person who said “I Can” and “moved mountains”. Over the years he presented these lectures at many corporate and youth talent development seminars of various organizations like the Rotary, Rotaract, Lions and Other Youth Clubs in Australia and Fiji.

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Introduction Motivation is not only making people do things, it is making people do things with greater enthusiasm. People have minds of their own, and it is their perception of the world that makes them decide to move or not to move, to be motivated or not to be motivated, but there are a few things we can do to influence them.

Therefore, it is important to note that people need positive reinforcement in life so that we can make them feel that they are doing the right thing and are moving in the right direction.

While motivating the unmotivated has been an important function of all our managers and supervisors of the work force, often times this vital responsibility has not been performed well enough. Hence, the commercial as well as the private sectors have wanted some relevant changes in the system.

We do have our share of these unmotivated workers at all our work places and on many occasions we get frustrated because we are not able to do much to motivate them to show their peak performance at all times.

The good news is that these types of workers can be motivated but we need to do our needs analysis and work according to their individual needs by developing different prescriptions for particular types of unmotivated workers.

Some of these lectures have ideas to tackle the problem. Of course, these are not the only solutions because many managers can do better.

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Lecture 1

Motivation For 21st Century ‘Motivation is not only making people do things, it is making people do things with greater enthusiasm. People have minds of their own, and it is their perception of the world that makes them decide to move or not to move, to be motivated or not to be motivated, but there are a few things we can do to influence them. Therefore, it is important to note that people need positive reinforcement in life so that we can make them feel that they are doing the right thing and moving in the right direction.

I think that a more successful person is the one who went ahead and did the thing the rest of us never quite got around to doing. But we can be motivated to catch up with whatever we missed in our life. So there is hope of making our commercial, industrial and the private sectors perform even better and give the services that are appreciated by the public or consumers.’ I wrote this in my introduction and I emphasize it again that to motivate the unmotivated is not an easy task because it requires continuous action and inspiration that should change the life of any performer anywhere, any time and any way.

Working as a teacher and human resource development personnel for over four decades has encouraged me to conduct various research studies, conduct needs analysis, do professional reading, present papers and speeches and display leadership qualities at numerous work stations, seminars, international conferences and social gatherings around the world. These in turn have enriched my life and I am deeply indebted to my colleagues, friends and family members for my personal development and knowledge.

Now that I have retired from active work life I think it is appropriate to plough back some of my own knowledge and skills that I have accumulated over the years to motivate everyone to keep moving ahead with vigour and brilliance in their daily activities. These series

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of presentation can assist people in need of ideas for motivating the unmotivated in the 21st century.

The subject that I have chosen for my presentation is “Moving Ahead With Self-Motivation� and I hope to cover various aspects of this topic and reveal how the knowledge and skills relating to motivation can enrich people’s own life and daily activities thereby making these attributes rub-off to benefit other colleagues and work mates.

I have found out that anyone who wants to be successful in the twenty first century has to take initiative and learn to be firm, fair and functional. It is increasingly realized that the path of human success and development begins within a person. So to thrive on the challenges that lie ahead one has to constantly and continuously pioneer, create, develop and construct ones future route if proper progress, prosperity and peace are the intended objectives.

You would definitely agree with me that our life should be a adventure, an ongoing series of rich experiences, a process of setting realistic goals and achieving fulfilment by realizing these aspects. We would certainly appreciate it if everyday can bring a spiritual triumph to us like the bright and warm sun bursting through the dark clouds.

People who aim to be effective, efficient and successful in life have to gradually learn to meet the current and future challenges of their lives by first taking a hard, careful and serious assessment of their daily activities and themselves. My own finding is that those of us who take time to continuously and constantly evaluate our daily living and examine ourselves thoroughly and without prejudice are able to detect their own strengths, weaknesses, talents and opportunities.

My aim is simple. I want to help people to penetrate the fog, clear the clouds and look into their inner self to grasp their confidence, their success orientation and the radiance around them. Many people have done this and so can everyone around us.

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This self-realization or the deeper knowledge of our self adequately and strongly equips us to search and find workable ideas; solutions and strategies to further improve our performance and competence.

However, those of us who have many untimely needs and demands, disorganized attitudes and uncontrolled timetables and schedules, are not able to look inwards and assess our daily living critically.

Consequently we meet many failures and insurmountable problems.

In the circumstances we can only put the blame on ourselves.

If self-assessment is not high on the agenda of our daily living and we are not able to give high priority to this aspect then definitely we would not be able to take full advantage of the many glaring opportunities that knock at our door continuously. Thus the multiple golden opportunities grow smaller and smaller and get lost in the terrible darkness of our lives. They become our threats, weaknesses, difficulties and cause a lot of negative growth within our environment and us.

Some people learn to get up and go without much pushing and encouragement because they have done their self assessment and have a definite objective in life but there are many of us who require the art and skills of self motivation because we lack the necessary discipline, knowledge and enthusiasm.

Knowledge is our power and information is our technology of the future therefore we need to be fully motivated to take the advantage of all the opportunities that lie ahead in our path. Knowledge of who you are and the information about the people, places and practices make us fully prepared to face the world we are going to live in the future.

Anyone who loves change, has desire for fast paced innovation and become a thrill-seeker is definitely ready to be motivated. To learn to motivate yourself is one of the best prescriptions for moving ahead and excel further in your chosen profession or trade. Motivated people are certainly peak performers and high achievers ready to move ahead with vigour.

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While working as a human resource practitioner I always had a strong dislike for individuals who were not performing well and I developed a deep desire to improve their skills, talents and outlook. I successfully managed to change people attitudes to work and life generally. I was happy to transform them by giving them the necessary tools of self-motivation.

I was successful because I developed a strong positive mental attitude. I was successful because I took success as a ladder and not an escalator. My success came to me because for me success was not a destination but a long, continuous, exhilarating and pleasant journey. Then I took a lesson from a wheelbarrow and learnt to lift myself up from the right end and keep pushing in order to be successful. Of course, like a turtle I had to learn to stick my neck out in order to move forward.

The ideas and suggestions contained in my presentation have come from various sources- my personal experiences and practices, my interactions with motivated leaders and people, my active participations in family and community life and my own thoughts and professional reading. We all can do these things and make our lives full of meaning and purpose.

These ideas can be put to many uses. You can get all the needed information about your success points. You will learn to get up and go to achieve your goals. You will learn to think positively to keep your progress sound alive and solid.

You as a reader have a very well constructed ladder in front of you.

It is not visible now but as you read the episodes page by page you will be able to appreciate and master these ideas and suggestions to learn to rise higher and higher in your daily life. The greatest thing to remember here is that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. You alone will have to decide to take that essential first step to read and then it will lead you to rise, grow up, enrich yourself and become a motivated person.

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This presentation has its beauty but it will only be revealed to the one who reads this with open mind and appreciates my intentions.

After reading this you will say “I Can�.

There are many lessons that we can learn from our rich experiences. One lesson that I learnt early in life was to work hard and it has always paid me heaps of dividends. In order to do this successfully we need to be brave, determined and focused. Do all your tasks well and share your duties and responsibilities carefully.

Thus you make yourselves stronger, more valuable and disciplined.

Always remember one important rule of life. Every successful person has to behave with tremendous integrity, sincerity and honesty with oneself. If you do this well enough, then motivating yourself to do anything in life will become a lot easier and simpler. You too can move mountains and motivate the unmotivated.

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Lecture 2

Self Development We all can work hard and develop our skills and talents ourselves.

Every successful person has self-development as a banner behind him or her. You can definitely claim that you are the boss of yourself.

You can do anything to develop yourself, your attitude and your talents. You are the master of your destiny. No one can stop you to do the right things at the right time if you have that strong desire to get up and go.

You have absolute freedom to choose your own route to success, progress and prosperity. You can become whatever you want to be and no one can hold you back if you have a strong wish, deep determination and serious self-confidence. This world is not for cowards and if you display simple bravery within yourself you are sure to be successful in everything you plan to do.

I am not asking you to fly but I want you to gather all your potentials and divert your good energy towards success and beat every failure that you face. This can be done by everyone who treasurers determination and perseverance.

I have used these workable ideas myself and many of my students have given me their feedback that these ideas and suggestions have worked for them to enrich their work and family life tremendously.

You too can experience many changes by interpreting these ideas the way you want.

A motivator can assist you to achieve your desired results but you alone have to develop a burning desire within you to excel, move forward and progress to learn and prosper. You must fully understand that you are the key to your own development.

If you can visualize and understand one of the greatest powers that are hidden within you then you will be able to achieve peak performance. You alone can make the difference to yourself. I can

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give you the most powerful sentence that contains ten two-letter words and this statement will help you bring the needed change within you and boost your self-esteem to conduct your selfdevelopment.

One of my favourite teachers gave me this powerful mantra and it has given me a lot of enthusiasm and encouragement in life: “IF IT IS TO BE, IT IS UP TO ME”. This ten two letter word sentence has done miracles for me and it would help you too.

You have to convince yourself that everything that you do depends on you and your determination. So you can develop your own prayer for success and self-development. IADOM - “IT ALL DEPENDS ON ME” If the above statements become your daily mantra then you will definitely develop full confidence in your words, actions, thoughts, character and heart. They will WATCH your progress and help you build a unique personality.

So there are a lot of reasons to place complete trust in yourself and your conduct by emulating and practicing the idea behind these simple statements. Once you begin to hold your belief in these statements, help and assistance will come to you in abundance from many directions.

Certainly then, if you want to help yourself develop strongly and intelligently and want to be successful to meet the increasing challenges of the twenty-first century you need to look at another very simple statement. Learn to say, “I CAN” at every step of your mental, physical and social development.

“I CAN” has been a positive statement and it has the power to create a miracle within you and in your life. It will have a flow-on effect on your family, friends and work mates if you firmly believe in the strength of this simple sentence.

During my university days I remember writing this sentence in bold capital letters on a large sheet of cardboard and hanging it on my

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bedroom and study wall. These four letters of the alphabet certainly brought a lot of success and progress for me over the years to change my overall attitude to living, learning, listening and working. I found an appropriate word for each of the four letters to enhance my living style.

You too can completely change your personality and attitude to perform if you fully understood the meaning and rationale hidden behind these four words. Each of these four letters of the sentence I C A N represents a very strong theme of self-development, selfimage and self-confidence in every person. This concept is as easy as ABCDI because “Any Body can do it”.

You need only two things to succeed in this endeavour. ‘Your faith in you’ and ‘your determination to do it well’.

‘I’ stands for IMAGINATION – It is the gateway to reality and the playhouse of your mind. The sky should be the limit to your realistic imagination. The greater the imagination the greater the result.

‘C’ develops your COMMITMENT – It gives you power and glory to your visions and your realistic dreams. It makes your dreams come true because you become committed to whatever you imagine.

‘A’ takes you to AFFIRMATION – It is the foundation of your new dimension, clear direction and proper perspective. All your committed imaginations are solidly consolidated and affirmed. You keep reminding yourself of your obligation and keep refining your goals.

‘N’ makes you NEVER GIVE UP -This is the firm resolution of all your real dreams and vision leading you to success and creativity.

Whatever difficulty comes in your life you learn to forge ahead with greater enthusiasm and force.

Therefore, I believe that the sentence “I CAN” is one of the real answers and practical solutions for all your progress and prosperity.

So say, “I CAN” to everything you want to do and you will assure and guarantee your success. This prescription of “I CAN” will

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certainly provide the needed answer to your efficiency and effectiveness and assist you to motivate yourself first and then those that are unmotivated.

Do not just say that “I will do my best” or “I will try my best” but learn to always say “I CAN” because this emotion will give you the necessary confidence and determination to move towards selfdevelopment. If you keep saying, “I CAN” with full confidence and faith then your whole body and mind get conditioned and will respond and react accordingly. Thus all your work will become challenging but possible.

I found that the only pre-requisite for all these is that you must have your firm belief and faith in the power of these human qualities. Your imagination must be real and you must be fully committed to all that you imagine. Naturally you will need to remind yourself of your realistic dreams and visions by continuously affirming and keeping your ideas alive. This will be your affirmation and may need constant reminders. There may be ups and downs before reaching the final results but you have to learn never to give up if you want to succeed and be a leader of the future economic revolution.

Some of us believe that there is always a better life in store for all of us and we possess the power to choose to break loose from the hypnotizing forces of our negative thoughts and deeds that sometimes imprison us. We can get out of this terrible cage if we know how to use the principles of “I CAN”.

However, some of us remain in that cage of ignorance and negativism and give up trying to free ourselves. Consequently we find failure in life and work. Of course, there are many more of us who are fully geared and prepared to get out of this bondage and prison of negative thoughts. These are the successful people who are on the possible route of becoming the winners and champions.

In fact everyone can be a winner and a champion by following the four dynamic human qualities I have described here. You should not delay acting on this prescription because I believe that ease brings disease. Learning to do it now will give you a lot of advantages.

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So a person who is out to conduct self-development becomes enlightened and self-confident .The person who seeks carefully, finds success and learns to rejoice and enjoy family and work life.

You can achieve great success by setting your goals right and carefully. Then be committed to your set goals through your determination in order to achieve the best results. Remember, nothing is impossible if you are willing to give it a go. “The aged are not so strong but can pass their knowledge to the youth who have the strength.� An old friend of mine gave this pictorial explanation to me and it shows how we can motivate people. Those who are willing workers are already doing well but those who are not need either coercion or incentive. Which one are you?

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Lecture 3

Positive Thinking We know that our minds are like parachutes; they work best when they are open. This presentation will help you to think positively if you read all these with an open mind.

When I was a student at Natabua Secondary School in 1954, one of my favourite teachers, Rohan Prasad, had once given me a very simple solution for progress. He said as a successful student I should make my life full of adventures and make my life an on-going series of rich experiences.

I had gone to this prestigious high school from a very simple country living and farming background and ‘adventures’ and ‘rich experiences’ were very powerful and distant ideas for me. However, upon enquiry my teacher simplified the ideas for me. He said that your entire life should be a process of setting effective goals and achieving fulfilment through realizing them.

I was advised to let every new day bring a spiritual triumph to me like the warm sun bursting through the clouds over the Mount Evans in the valley of the Sleeping Giants of Sabeto. My teacher told me to make a feature movie and let it be screened before me every day.

He wanted me to be the producer, director, manager and the main actor of that movie but he demanded that the movie would become more realistic, relevant, and meaningful if I was also the writer, the audience and the critic of my scenarios.

This was a huge task and naturally I hesitated. My teacher said that the whole activity was absolutely possible because I was responsible for all the images and that was my drama and my creation. The story, he said, involved my happiness, misery, success, failures, laughter, tears, goodness, truth, beauty and even my evil and ugliness were to be there.

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When I seemed negative about the project, my teacher emphasized that it was the calibre and standard of my self-image that would cause me to rise to the new heights or descend to the depressing depths. He added that even if I could not see my self-image and could not touch it, nonetheless it was very real. It was to be my big picture of myself.

So through the motivational efforts of one of my best teachers I understood that I had to make fine, big, and strong images of myself to succeed in life. The finer, the bigger, and the stronger the images I made of myself, the better would be my satisfaction, achievement and pleasure. From then onward I began making my images that gave me rich experiences and positive adventures.

Thus, I think everyone can think positively and develop a gigantic self-image. I too learnt that if I saw myself as an inferior and unworthy person I would meet and see failures before I even made a start of anything. I began to think positively. I had a resounding urge to be a creative person. I wanted to succeed, progress and prosper.

I wanted to overcome all my problems myself when I encountered them.

I was no longer a timid country boy but a student full of determination to succeed and participate in almost all the activities and opportunities that were available. I had a self-image of an excellent student, a good sportsperson, and a high achiever.

Similarly, anyone can be enlightened and definitely become a successful person, an effective worker, an efficient leader and an excellent student. Every person therefore, has the legitimate human right to decide and construct ones brilliant future. The only requirement is that there must exist a strong sense of positive thinking.

Everything should look possible for that person and then he or she too can excel and be a high achiever. One should take everyday as a new day of ones life and be ready to excel with positive feelings and thoughts. In fact, nothing is impossible for us if we put in our total commitment and effort to stretch beyond our limits. We must

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remember that in these tough times we need to be even tougher actors, performers and workers to witness greater success.

If we find out that our very best efforts are not giving us the required results because of the tougher and harder times then we must change our tactics, strategies and efforts. We must promise a lot and deliver a lot more.

A lot of things in life are possible if we quickly learn to develop a sound knowledge base and collect a lot of relevant and appropriate information. Nothing should be impossible for a person who believes in the idea of positive mental attitude (PMA).

I believe that IMPOSSIBLE is the dirtiest ten-letter word whereas POSSIBILITY is the most beautiful and meaningful idea in our vocabulary. We must continuously flash this powerful word on the screen of our self-image multiple times in a day to remind us that our real life drama is moving in the right direction at the correct speed and proper precision.

I know for a fact that all those people who have learnt to move ahead with possibility thinking are meeting with greater success and super competence in their lives. It is the power of this possibility thinking that should give us the prescription to turn every difficult task into possible adventure.

Things may take time to give positive results but with the power of persistence we can overcome all difficulties. Depending on the depths of our efforts, feelings and attitudes we will see positive results either in minutes, hours, days or weeks.

One thing is certain though that we can achieve all our goals if we learn not to give up easily. Every human being has the ability to be a positive thinker. The sooner we learn to do it the better it is for our future progress. We will need determination, dedication, discipline and commitment.

According to Vivekananda the history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves. If you have faith in yourself

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then you can do anything. You fail only when you do not strive sufficiently to manifest infinite power of positive thinking. So it is clear that if you have been able to develop a strong faith in yourself it definitely becomes the secret of greatness in you and your life.

Therefore it is foolish to think that there is anything impossible for the enlightened soul.

Ancient Hindus developed a creed, an idea to move forward with deeper commitment and stronger determination. They called it Kalyaan Vichaar Shakti, which we can loosely translate as POSSIBILITY THINKERS’ CREED. Ever since its development people have studied the meaning and form of this powerful creed.

They have put a lot of care and a great deal of understanding to put this creed into practice. This was done largely to develop and gain courage, conviction and command.

Anybody and everybody can put the creed or the idea into practice.

You may have to say this creed many times daily to instil the power of positive thinking in you but you will not regret doing it. You will definitely achieve results.

Some successful people have written this creed on a large scroll and let it hang from a prominent place on the wall of their home or office.

Others have written this at least three times a day and passed it to their friends. Even Swami Vivekananda had his own possibility creed when he said, “Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be.”

POSSIBILITY THINKERS’ CREED WHEN FACED WITH A MOUNTAIN OF PROBLEMS, I WILL NOT QUIT, I WILL KEEP ON STRIVING, UNTIL I CLIMB OVER THEM, FIND A PASS THROUGH THEM, TUNNEL UNDERNEATH THEM, OR SIMPLY STAY THERE AND TURN ALL MY MOUNTAIN OF PROBLEMS INTO MY GOLD AND DIAMOND MINES.

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If we wanted to succeed with this idea then we too have to take some serious actions like saying the creed loudly with our emotional commitment. We can move ahead with possibility thinking in our life and be able to move many mountains of problems. We can expect nothing great from any person of little hearts. We must have an iron will if we want to cross the wide ocean and we must be strong enough to pierce mountains.

This creed can make some difference to our whole attitude to life, work and family. It is worth trying. You can get it if you learn to cooperate and go as a team. Wake up, stand up, be bold, be strong and take the whole responsibility on your own shoulder to understand that you are the creator of your destiny. Make your own future look brighter and more meaningful.

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Lecture 4

Demand For Perfection A motivated student once said, “I know I am not perfect but I am so close to it that it scares me.” That student moved ahead to display super academic excellence.

We have heard the saying that no one is perfect, but at least we can make an effort to reach perfection. This is largely because of the belief that ‘we are not perfect but parts of us are beautiful’ and if we used these beautiful parts we too can move towards perfection. At many modern work places we get the demand for quality control, quality assurance and perfection therefore the sooner we learn to follow that route the better it is for all of us.

Some religious sects say that there is an even better life for all of us lying somewhere ahead or in the future than the one we are living today. They also believe that we can achieve a lot more in our life if we understood ourselves as well as the people with whom we interact everyday. This understanding will give us an urge to improve our environment and ourselves.

I think that there is a cure for human weakness when we stop brooding over our weakness and think about our strength. It is with that strength that lies within us that we can aim to demand perfection in ourselves. Remember to look at this world as the greatest gymnasium where people come to make themselves strong and you are no exception.

I know of an Indian proverb that says that it is the coward and the fool who says, “This is fate” – but it is the strong person who stands up and says, “I will make my fate.” I have found out that the road to the “Good Living” is the roughest and the steepest in this complex and difficult world. So many of us succeed and so many of us fall but if we are able to establish strong character we will never stumble.

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There is no doubt at all in my mind that we can be more successful and gradually move towards perfection if we tried harder and made greater efforts in everything we did. This strong feeling to progress in life is vital if we want to achieve more success and reach peak performance.

We know the maxim ‘practice makes us perfect’ but it is no longer true for many of us because our practice may be wrong and inappropriate so we have to coin a new phrase for us. Perfect practice makes us perfect. Learning to put perfect ideas into practice is moving ahead with motivation.

It goes without saying then that we must put a command in our sub conscious mind that all our skills, talents, traits, ideas and techniques of doing all the work should be perfect at all times. In short, we must constantly and continuously try our best to skill and re-skill ourselves so that we are ever ready to achieve that goal of perfection at home and at work.

I have come across many people who say that there is nothing as perfect. I disagree with these negative people because by our own standards and actions we can achieve perfection. Who is holding you to proceed in that direction? Who is telling you that there is no state as perfect? Who wants you to slow down? In most cases the culprit is hidden inside you. It is your negative thought. It is your inability to motivate yourself. If you get rid of that negative feeling then you can move towards perfection. These negative people are like that frog in the well.

We all know the story that our kindergarten teachers told us. A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there. It enjoyed living there and was feeling good to be on its own. Well one day another frog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.

“Where are you from?” asked the frog of the well.

“I am from the sea,” the new frog replied.

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“The sea! How big is that? Is it as large as my well?” and he took a leap from one side of the well to the other.

“My friend,” said the frog from the sea, “you can not compare the big ocean with your little well.”

The frog of the well took another big leap and said, “Is your ocean so big?”

“You will not understand the difference my friend because you have not seen the ocean,” reiterated the frog from the sea.

“Oh no, nothing can be bigger than this, you are a liar, just get out of my well,” said the frog of the well.

This has always been the difficulty of our world all along. We are all sitting in our own little wells and do not believe that there is a larger and more knowledgeable world to be perceived. If we want to be liberated and be motivated then we must break down this barrier of this little world of ours. Let us extend our horizon and educate us with new ideas and more relevant information.

It is believed that we are the most enlightened of all animal species on earth and therefore we should be superior in our knowledge, information, wisdom and education by increasing our participation in the community we live in. We have the power to excel in everything we plan, direct, control and do. The main difference between people and the animals is the difference in their power of concentration. All our success in any line of work is the result of this super power.

We all react and respond to various ideas but the demand of the modern times is to be pro-active in our behaviour and conduct. We must take the initiative and learn to do things right with all our might without being prompted or without any push from outside. This is moving ahead with self-motivation.

There are many negative forces in and around all of us and these negative forces unfortunately try to hold us back from moving ahead

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and progressing the way we want but there are many ways to fight these negative influences.

This is the main hiding within us. identified, found, effectively and development.

reason for our inertia. This is the greatest villain This is the reason for our downfall. It has to be blamed and destroyed if we want to participate contribute efficiently to all types of human

Who can you blame for your failures and downfalls? It is your fear. It is your shyness. It is your uncertainty. It is your ignorance. All these bring threats and weaknesses to you. Fear is your strongest enemy.

Shyness is your sin. However, courage is one of the most powerful human qualities that would help you to overcome these problems.

Get self-motivated and collect your courage to move ahead in life.

You too can proceed towards perfection.

If you are lagging behind in any field then it is because you have gradually become an impossible thinker. This is your real oppressive power that draws you away from trying to become a perfect performer. You can definitely get out of this negative thinking if you push yourself towards knowledge, wisdom and information. I am confident that the world is ready to give up all its secrets, if we only know how to knock the right door and how to give it the necessary blow.

There are people among us who very quickly abandon a good idea because they have seen something wrong with it. They quickly put a sound plan away because they think that it will not work. All plans and ideas have value and can be moderated or revised according to your needs.

When you find something wrong with an organization, an institution, a tradition or any person do not reach a quick conclusion that the whole thing is useless and will not work for anybody. It is often found that the whole thing can work perfectly well with a slight modification.

In fact with that modification it can become a better idea. So let us quickly learn to appreciate all things and ideas around us. We can build our bridges of progress on these good points that are hidden.

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There is goodness in everything if we looked at them carefully. The whole thing cannot be useless and we cannot just write it off straight away without giving it a second thought. It all depends on how we perceive and see it. There may be more positive value in them than we have been able to assess at the first glance or observation.

In case of the slightest doubt we must discuss the total value of those ideas with friends and family members dispassionately and without any prejudice. This will enable us to weigh the worthiness of them as against their shortcomings. This is how you can learn to differentiate and proceed towards perfection.

People, who accept an idea that holds at least some possibility of goodness, definitely know how to amend, modify, qualify, and alter them to suit their situation. They do not simply throw away the ideas because someone has said that they would not work. They give the ideas a go and try them out.

After washing and cleaning the baby we do not throw out the baby with the dirty water, do we? The baby has emerged clean but the water that has become dirty in the process has to be thrown away.

Similarly, if you have used your intelligence to modify an idea and are happy with the refined, clearer and more appropriate ideas and solutions then you must anoint, decorate and beautify them and only throw away those that do not work for you. Hope of the modern world rests in people who are demanding perfection from all their words, deeds and thoughts.

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Lecture 5

Strengths And Opportunities Most of us are not able to do great things, but we definitely can do small things in a great way. This is for sure if we put our mind to our work.

Let us seriously consider the many golden opportunities that knock on your door everyday and yet many of us are not able to consider, recognize and use these to our advantage. This requires you to gather all your strengths and go out to grab the opportunities that are moving around you. Some of us are not able to do this because we face multiple threats and have our own unique weaknesses.

Remember that winning comes to the people who are motivated to move ahead without any fear. When your fear is removed your strengths increase and you are able to kill the threats and finish all your weaknesses easily. The result is that you are able to take advantage of all the opportunities that exist in front of you.

The diagram above has four concentric circles. Our whole life can be explained using these four circles that depict four human qualitiesopportunities, threats, weaknesses and strengths. We face these

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qualities in our life many times. Our strengths can become the largest of our success factors if we are able to take full advantage of all our opportunities that knock on our door. However, in between our opportunities and strengths we have two very negative factors creating havoc for us and they are our weaknesses and threats.

If you destroy your lovely dreams and useful visions then the blame must rightfully go to you because you are the destroyer and therefore solely responsible for holding yourself from progress and prosperity. So learn to treasure your dreams and visions because they may be useful in the future.

However, if this happens then you alone should correct the situation by getting out of this predicament. There is no doubt at all that you too can be free by liberating yourself and thinking positively. Human beings are definitely capable to performing multiple miracles. Many others have done this before and it is your turn now. Stand up and be counted among the very best around you. Let me show you how you can do this.

Let us go back to the diagram. It is a given fact that we have many opportunities lying around us and we always have the necessary strengths hidden within us. By doing the duty or work that is nearest to us and is in our hands now, we make ourselves stronger. Through concentration on our current accomplishments we can improve our strength step by step. This is where we learnt to select our opportunities. We cannot build our strength if we greedily jump on every opportunity that we get. We must learn to grade and assess our opportunities and take advantage of the ones that suit us most and the ones that will give us greater benefits.

The sad thing is that we also have threats and weaknesses making their pressures felt. Obviously we can make our opportunities grow bigger if we reduced our threats and weaknesses. If there are no threats and weaknesses then our opportunities will be as large as our strengths. The next diagram illustrates this point. If you are able to take away the darker shades of threats and weaknesses then you certainly can fill that gap with your opportunities when you use your strengths.

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This is the secret of your self-motivation and the result of your performance. We have the power and capabilities to create great and miraculous actions every time we respond with positive feelings and are pro active in our approach. So let us learn to increase our strengths and enlarge our opportunities.

To attain good progress and greater success it is important that we detect our threats and weaknesses gradually and act confidently to eliminate them one by one. How can you do this? There are many ways to tackle this but let me give you one solid method to start your journey.

You must begin with a vision, a dream and a definite goal. Then use the four mathematical formulae of add, subtract, divide and multiply your ideas. Select the best one and be committed to achieving the best results.

Firstly, you must learn to divide all your difficulties, problems, threats and weaknesses in groups of the least to the most threatening. Then try to conquer the least threatening ones one by one. Gradually progress to attack the harder ones later.

Secondly, you must multiply all your existing and future possibilities, solutions and workable ideas in your mind and use them to your advantage. The more the possibilities, the better the attack. The clearer the solution, the stronger the actions. The bigger the idea, the smoother the progress. Then, remember to continuously detect and subtract all your negative feelings, thoughts and ideas.

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Lastly, add a lot of enthusiasm, courage, excitement, initiative and confidence into all your activities. There will be no power in this world that can stop you from become stronger to get rid of all your threats and weaknesses and take full advantage of all your opportunities.

Thus you too will be able to improve the quality of your work, your life and all your general contributions. You too will be able to speed up all your activities and deliveries. Of course, all your work could then be done at a much lower cost because you will be able to push down all the unnecessary expenses and learn to economize.

There is no doubt at all in my mind that everyone can then develop a stronger sense of achievement and participation in all family life.

Then without doubt you will be fully prepared to perform and present yourself with dignity and pride. In fact I have found out that my five P formula has been a great success for me.

Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Presentation. Therefore, the greater your initial preparation and effort, the better your presentations become at all fronts in life and at work. Once you begin to try these methods, then the other ideas of self-motivation, progress and prosperity will automatically become second nature for you. Then you do not only become energized but you will be the most enlightened and enthusiastic person ever ready to find many new future directions easily.

Your route to the twenty-first century will then be a smooth highway where you will be able to accelerate your success and enjoy your life to the fullest. I have given you a few ideas but there are many that you can now find out for yourself. I found out early in my life that to give ourselves the best possible chance of doing anything to our fullest potential, we must prepare for every eventuality and that means a lot of practice.

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Lecture 6

Freedom To Think Big Before I start this presentation let me warn you that people with open minds must be careful these days. There are a lot of others around intent on throwing rubbish into them. Then we have to do a lot of cleaning up.

Let me assure you though that imprisoned within your sub consciousness there are vast opportunities that have not had the chance to be fully realized because of your threats and weaknesses.

It is by using our fullest strengths that we can expand and enlarge our opportunities. Opportunities are like birds that never perch so we must keep them flying high to get the most satisfaction and freedom.

We also know that there is no other human force greater than our power to think. So we have the innate propensity to work loose and free ourselves from the mental cage and begin to dream, visualize and imagine reaching greater happiness, complete bliss and total enlightenment. If you can control your thinking and your vision then it is possible to free yourself from fear.

It is indeed sad to note that many people have over the years developed a fear of failure within themselves and this seems to be their greatest shortcoming and difficulty. In order to move ahead with vigour and pride we need to completely destroy this fear right now.

This will give you the freedom to think big and achieve greater success.

This fear within you blocks your dynamic creativity. This is the villain hidden inside you that holds you in the cage and does not let you fly to reach your goals. You are thus locked up and are unable to find a way out towards new directions. There are many opportunities glaringly looking at you but you are not able to take full advantage of these because of your fear and uncertainty. You have to look yourself inwards and unlock yourself to take your fear of failure out of you at once.

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The minute you are able to eliminate your fear of failure and begin to aim higher and think big you will be freed from your mental cage.

Your brain will then throw out millions of brilliant sparks and mammoth thoughts that will prepare you to face the world head on without any difficulty. Many successful people have been liberated and have reached fantastic heights and glaring success in their life by just sheer concentration and discipline. They have won many battles of life. They have made great progress. They will continue to win. There is no reason why you cannot do the same.

Not to win is not a sin but to fear to win is definitely a sin. A successful person wants to solve many of the problems immediately because these problems can dissolve all the visions and good thoughts. Finding immediate solutions to all your problems gives you an opportunity to be more creative and resolute. You gain confidence and get more determined to move ahead with added vigour.

This is why I say that all your opportunities are like the birds that never perch. These opportunities are always flying around you so there is no reason to have a wait and see attitude. Get up and go!

I was lucky to have some very professional teachers while I was at school. In my final years of high school my teacher Parshuram advised me to take care of my today and let my visions and imaginations take charge of my future life. He said that my today should be the beginning of a new adventure if I wanted to move ahead with determination tomorrow. I needed to build a firm foundation today if I wanted my tomorrow to begin giving benefits to me.

It took me no time at all to follow this direction to control my today properly to make my tomorrow more exciting and more rewarding. I knew my tomorrow would bring better results for me because I was fully prepared today. I developed powerful self-confidence and was able to set myself free from fear of the future.

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Many years ago my wife and I were out on our evening walk on the beach. There we saw a fisherman at the jetty. He pulled out a large fish, measured it, and then threw it back into the sea. After a while he caught a second fish, smaller this time, measured it again and then put it in his basket. Any fish that measured more than thirty centimetres he threw it back into the sea but kept all those that were smaller.

Naturally this behaviour puzzled me and I quietly questioned the fisherman with curiosity. “Why do you keep the smaller ones in your bag and throw the larger ones back into the sea?� He explained that his frying pan at home only measured thirty centimetres across.

We concluded that this was what many people did in their real life situation. They throw away the bigger and brighter ideas. They discard the most beautiful dreams that come into their mind simply because their experiences are limited; their self-confidence is too under-developed to enable them to grab hold of the bigger and better opportunities and suggestions that come before them.

We all have profound capacity and capability to liberate ourselves from our locked mental cages and work free from narrow and limited experiences. We just have to learn to aim high, find firmer objectives and develop clearer goals in order to accommodate bigger and brighter ideas.

God has given us the needed strength and intelligence to try to solve many of our problems either ourselves or through interaction, assistance and cooperation of others around us. The very moment we learn to seek, we shall find the answers and solutions to our difficulties and problems.

Some of us are very lucky to have good teachers, wise elders and faithful friends who continuously encourage us to extend our horizon, enlarge our experiences and develop our self-confidence. These activities encourage us to take hold of all the big and small ideas that generate within us so that we can take advantage of all the opportunities that knock loudly on our doors. If we grab these

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chances at the right time then we excel and meet many successes.

If we do not then we meet disaster and failure. The choice is yours.

Trying your best may not be enough to meet the many increasing challenges of the modern times. You may have to try and try again and be fully convinced that you can do it.

My father once told me to grow up with a vision to think big. He said one thing all human beings should remember was that big things happened to only the people who think big and are prepared to take the risk. In fact I soon learnt that nothing big happens to the people who think little and from then onwards I made up my mind that I too was going to become the person I wanted to be. A few failures did not ever deter me to give up.

It did not take me long to believe that it was definitely possible to begin immediately to discover new things and gather more beautiful ideas. The more successes I was able to meet, the greater was my belief that I was moving ahead to progress and prosperity. This affirmed my belief that my pathway was brilliant and I was moving in the right direction.

It meant that I alone was my saviour. I was to wake up, get up and arise to move ahead in life and seek solutions to my problems. I had to get out of the locked cage so that I became free to act. Nothing was going to stop me because I became capable of doing great things and performing great deeds. I felt that I could create miracles because my body and mind were working in harmony.

My prime duty was to release the power within me and become the person I wanted to be. I learnt to have correct vision of my future and I became energetic, enthusiastic and motivated. I was ready to move mountains of trouble if they arose and bothered me.

So let me reiterate that all the people who have seen success in their lives say “I CAN” and “YES” to many ideas that came to their mind. Nothing was IMPOSSIBLE for them. They have never blocked any helpful thoughts and obstructed workable plans. They were always prepared to take the risk. Those successful people have

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never waited by the roadside for the coconuts to fall and roll up to them but they have always speedily climbed up the tallest tree to persistently pick the ripe fruit at the most appropriate time.

We often find that there are too many people among us who continuously pray for all the mountains of difficulty to be removed from their life, when what they really need is to collect the courage to climb that mountain and eradicate the difficulties.

I know for certain that if you decide to move ahead and put in your best foot forward with the right attack you must always meet success. You must win all the battles of your life.

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Lecture 7

The Real Winners There are many different kinds of people around us but I am going to talk about the two special types of people living among us. The first ones are those who dislike work and so have the tendency to avoid all hard work. They can only perform if they are coerced, controlled, directed, punished and given threats.

Then there are the second type, the ones who love to automatically put in and show their peak performance at all times. They love to work harder and find new paths and challenging directions. They are the thrill-seekers and the high-achievers who go ahead to become real champions, heroes and the real winners.

All of us have these choices in front of us in our life. We could take the route we want and follow it. So you have the choice to selfmotivate yourself to be the real winner but you could also be the one who needs to be pushed and reminded to perform your daily tasks.

Then you will be the loser and we are not going to talk about the losers.

Let us talk about the real winners. If you choose to be the real winner then all the champions of the world expect you to put in a lot of hard work consistently. Hard work always pays excellent dividends. By working hard you have the choice to reach your goals easily and certainly.

Let us tarry a little and visualize who we can rightfully call a winner in these trying and competitive times. There are as many interpretations of the word winner as there are thoughts and ideas. If you begin to firmly believe that you are a winner then you will always be a real winner.

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The real winners: Find time and work harder at all times. There are no excuses, no procrastination and no delays but just an urge to move ahead positively and persistently.

Have pride in their organization or the institution they work in and love their work thoroughly. They find total fulfilment in their work and are able to establish complete faith and hope in their enterprise or institution.

Develop a variety of courage to go to the problems straight away without any delay.

Make many firm commitments and continuously affirm them. “I CAN DO IT” becomes “I WILL DO IT” and then finally the feeling of “I DID IT” completes their tasks.

Know the difference between the times to fight and the times to give away. No one can keep pressing at one speed always. You will have to slow down at the busy intersections, bends and crowded places.

You can speed up cautiously at clear and straight highways.

Establish strong friendly feelings with everyone. If you have many faithful friends your commitment and confidence increase and you get inspired at every step you take.

Read intensively, listen very carefully and put all gathered information into good practice. These reading, listening and practicing will give you the needed tools of effective communication.

If you have the ability to communicate effectively and efficiently at work and in life then you can out-negotiate anyone or any situation.

Give a lot of respect to the strengths of colleagues who have the capacity to provide us enthusiasm, excitement, courage, wisdom and suggestions.

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Learn from wisdom and experiences of others. Our regular association with others to use their wisdom and experiences will definitely enrich our life.

Explain all the actions taken and activities done by them with pride to everyone who want to know these. We can only explain these well if we knew WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, HOW and WHY of our activities.

Feel responsible and accountable for every action taken and work done by him or her. You have to be honest with everyone and everything you do.

Set their own workable goals and move forward with determination at their own calculated pace. They know that goal setting is not that easy because apart from determination and concentration they require diligence and skills to achieve their goals and objectives.

Use all the time available to improve quality and learn to do the right thing at the right time. They do the things right as well as do the right things at all times.

Take faster action and have no fear of making mistakes. They never repeat their mistakes and learn their lessons from all their mistakes.

Understand themselves and the people they deal with properly. Selfunderstanding is the key to understanding other people and property.

Control all the actions, costs and situations because without control all progress would become chaotic. Real winners learn to do a lot more in less time and with fewer things.

These winning tips should release you from all bondage and give you the freedom to reach out for new routes and directions in life. So definitely you too can be a winner!

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Lecture 8.

Understanding Our Own Life And The Life Of Our Workers There is a saying that goes like this, “Life is like a ten-speed bike.

Most of us have gears we never use.” Of course, when we do our needs analysis we find that there are many unmotivated workers among us who need to be fully understood to provide them with the necessary tools to shine in their performance.

Proper and deeper studies of our people, places, procedures, principles and priorities have always provided us many right answers and solutions for our progress and prosperity. Through our studies we come to know the different types of individuals that we confront every day at our work place.

Some of our workers are commanders, some are drifters and yet we find that there are those that are drifters. Of course, there are real performers, attackers, builders and analytical. But we should be careful with those that love to please, who are avoiders of work and who are the negative thinkers.

After you are able to find all the types of people you have in your workforce you then group them and prepare different and appropriate prescriptions for their skilling and development. Give them repeated training using a variety of methods. Then the life of your work mates would definitely be transformed to your satisfaction.

Remember not to get frustrated and never give up. Monitor the situations and the progress of your people to make the training and development of their life effective, relevant and efficient. Keep saying the mantra of ‘I CAN’ .

Once you begin to think positively and develop an urge to be a winner your life is ready to bring changes for you, your friends and your family. We need to properly understand our life because our life has to be long, interesting, fruitful and exciting.

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According to Bhagavad-Gita a Hindu Religious Scripture, human life has many explanations, interpretations and meanings. The more we know about human life, the better we will be able to conduct all the needed activities of our life. Let me try to translate the meaning and essence of life for you. One thing that should never escape our thinking when looking at our life is that these explanations are based on the vital principles of humanity, which are truth, beauty and goodness.

Life is an adventure and we are constantly asked to be brave enough to face it and learn to dare it at all times. If we do we become wiser.

Life has to be taken as a beautiful platform and panoramic scenery to be admired, appreciated and praised. The world becomes a beautiful place to live.

Life is a challenge for all human beings with stronger determination to meet it head on without any fear or shame. We gather a lot of courage to do things our way.

Life has to be looked at as a series of duties to be performed by everyone with the fullest competence and effectiveness. We begin performing well at all times.

Life, if taken as an intelligent game, can provide many winning opportunities for all of us if we knew how to properly play our individual roles and behave in our respective positions well. We play our parts well and act with dignity.

Life, for many of us, is a gift from God and those of us who accept it as such will be able to make it even better and brighter by putting in our best performance in every thing we do. We thank God for giving us that precious gift.

Life has been regarded as an ultimate goal for everyone to excel and achieve the best possible results if we tried harder every time we made an effort. We become high achievers.

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Life is a long journey for us to learn to complete it with total pride, honour and deep commitment. We keep moving ahead with selfmotivation.

Life is a mystery for many people but if they are fully prepared to unfold it intelligently then they can reap the greatest benefits from it.

We are able to solve a lot of our problems with ease.

Life has and offers many opportunities and those of us who are ready and eager to take full advantage of these can and will always succeed. We believe in our self-image.

Life offers a variety of promises and we can all win if we knew how to fulfill all of these and deliver even more than what we promise ourselves, our friends, relatives and family members. We flourish in our community.

Life for some people is a complicated puzzle but those of us who try to seek workable solutions can lead a happy living and harmonious existence. There is no confusion for us.

Life is full of music; it is a melodious song and a very peaceful tune.

If we can decode that music, sing that song and understand that tune we are ready to enjoy the peace and prosperity that prevails around us. We rejoice and rejuvenate.

Life can also be covered with many sad events and sorrows and if we are fully prepared to learn the ways to overcome these, then we can progress and prosper. We live with hope and faith.

Life is a spirit for us to get together and realize it. This gives us our team spirit, good character and feeling. We learn to cooperate and control our destiny.

Life is full of struggles and we must continuously move ahead with stronger determination and commitment to get the best out of our efforts. We persevere.

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Life can be a tragedy if we are not able to meet our obligations carefully and honestly. We shall overcome.

Life is an easy path to salvation is we knew our future directions and looked for pure pathways ahead. We will find peace and harmony in our daily living.

Life demands us to be righteous, humane and useful to everyone if we want to live happily. We learn to interact with kindness and spread the message of love.

If our life has such a majestic list of interpretations then we ought to take our life seriously and find ways and means to self-motivate ourselves so that we can be useful and helpful to our country, our community and the society as a whole. Definitely similar interpretations of life can be found in all religious scriptures for us to seek and find.

I seriously think that the be-all and end-all of life should not only be to get rich, but to enrich the world. Philosophers have told us loud and clear that Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it. Take life seriously and enjoy. We will definitely find ways and means to motivate all your unmotivated work mates.

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Lecture 9.

Let Us Be Creative An important issue that we wish to discuss here is creativity, which is our ability and power to make our own life easier through our own initiative, intelligence and imagination. To be creative is to be able to make things, invent ideas and develop principles that can be used to your advantage.

There are many ways to develop this vital skill but we will look at the best ten methods that can be practiced easily by everyone who is willing and disciplined to do so. Our Creator has given us the power of creativity and we need to open the valve of that instrument.

1. Have full confidence in your ability to do things on your own.

It has been a proven fact that our brain has vast untapped potential, which can be developed and utilized further.

2. Use your sub-conscious mind by clearly defining your goals and immediately beginning to work on these. Let your subconscious mind chew over these objectives even while you are sleeping or resting. You can then blast all your problems and find the solutions easily.

3. Gather as many effective ideas as you can by being adventurous and forthright. Think clearly and prioritize them.

It is believed that often a crazy idea has great potential. The likelihood of finding a solution is greatly increased if we have a large ideas bank or a think tank of people and friends.

4. Develop the power of persistence and keep returning to your initial goals and objectives. Look at your problems seriously from various conceivable angles and given them your full concentration.

5. Choose the right time of the day to do all your creative work.

If you are tired and worn out then your mind will not be able to be as productive as you like it to be, therefore, you will probably slog away with very few good results.

6. Feed your mind with new, fresh and valuable information constantly and consistently. The ideas and thoughts of other

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7.

8.

9.

10.

people will certainly stimulate your own thinking. Read widely, discuss extensively and seek new information.

Systematize your thinking time. It is a waster of time if ideas are allowed to just free float through your mind and are never properly recorded in any permanent and useable form. It is suggested by many successful people that you keep an ideas book or a folder to file away all your beautiful and creative thoughts for future reference.

Talk freely and openly to other people because your friends, workmates and colleagues may be able to provide you with fresh talking points, which can assist you to develop new and finer thought-patterns. Often we are far too close to our problems to be able to clearly see the forest for the trees.

Always work to a deadline. Set your date to seek your solutions. Nothing kills your enthusiasm faster than insecurity and aimlessness. If you must arrive at a solution by a set time and date then this will motivate you to keep moving in that direction with firm desire.

Always keep an ideas-net with you because great ideas often surface unexpectedly. Catch all your ideas as soon as they emerge. The best way to lose a brilliant idea is to fail to catch it at the right time and record it for future use.

If we followed the above suggestions wisely and added a few of our own to these then it is more than likely that we would be able to develop the power of creativity within us and our work force.

However, it is worth remembering that creativity in us can be developed with constant practice. So if we tried to spend about fifteen minutes a day thinking of new ideas that we can apply to achieve our goals and to succeed at work then our progress, competence and performance would all be effective and assured.

Remember that we should never try to squelch and crush any creative ideas only because no one has ever succeeded in perfecting them before. Give a go to all potentially good suggestions and your future will look brighter. For me it has always been a sin to discard a plan or a project just because someone said that it would not work. I put that plan into practice first and then find out for myself whether it is worth trying.

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No progressive person ever quits just because one has reached the end of the road. There is no end to the road of human progress and development. Something more constructive and creative can be and must be done always by planning and controlling all our activities.

So you too can become more creative and let all your dreams come true but you should immediately start dreaming intelligently while you are fully awake. Be sure to make all your dreams really big and bright enough so that the whole world could clearly see and visualize them. Let these goals, ideas, dreams and visions grow, expand, explode and branch out.

Creativity is like a treasure hunt. You need to ask yourself a lot of open-ended questions and then track down the right answers. There may be multiple answers to your one question and you may have to be selective in accepting the most reasonable answer. Even your answers can raise further questions but you should never give up.

Keep moving because you are moving in the right direction.

Develop your imagination and assess your subconscious mind. Be curious and have passion to do something special and specific.

Creativity is a doing rather than a being so go out and discover things for you and achieve miracles.

Remember also that your creativity, your questions, your discovery and your achievements will lead you to your goals, your objectives and your targets. You will definitely be motivated to keep moving ahead in life.

You can discover many talents within you if you become creative.

There are many hidden power within you. Seek and ye shall find.

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Lecture 10

Your Natural Drive There is Your God Given Drive present within you. It is your inspiration. It is your will to do things on your own. It is your initiative to get up and go. Many motivational speakers have said that that tool of individual success is made up of a sentence that has ten twoletter words: IF IT IS TO BE, IT IS UP TO ME! This is a great tool.

This ten two-letter word sentence was the gift of one of my favourite teachers and it has given me all the inspiration that I needed to succeed in life. It was my power to stand up and be counted in the community. It was my confidence builder. It was my self-esteem and my enthusiasm to do the right things at the right time. This was the first step that began my journey of many miles.

With the help of this mantra naturally I developed a unique faith in me. I began to visualize my own potential. I had an unwavering belief in my own human powers and qualities when I realized the true value and strength of this idea. I began to repeat this small and simple sentence many times a day so that it kept generating the needed energy within me and giving me the push to carry on believing in my capabilities.

Whenever there was a slight lull or a small problem in my progress and my life this helpful tool provided me with multiple energies and boosters of enthusiasm and excitement. I was constantly motivated and kept moving ahead with speed.

Another supplementary tool of my success was a poem that I studied at school. It was called “IF� by an unknown poet. I do not know how many times I have recited this poem aloud in my life to inspire myself and motivate me. It has done miracles for me and I am sure if you too can fill your inner self with the power of this poem then you too would benefit tremendously.

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IF If you think you are beaten, you are, If you think you dare not, you don’t.

If you like to win, but you think you can’t, It is almost certain that you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost, For out of this world we find, Success begins with a fellow’s will— It is all in the state of mind.

If you think you’re outclassed, you are, You’ve got to think high to rise, You’ve got to be sure of yourself Before you can ever win a prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go To the strongest or the fastest man, But sooner or later the one who wins Is the one who thinks he can.

Anon….

After reading this meaningful poem you must seriously reconsider your own Natural Drive. Look for that drive now and when you find it then you should have the key to open any door of your life. You become the key to your own success. You are the most important person for your own progress and prosperity.

Gradually you will find out that the first prize or the top award does not always go to the most talented person. While the most talented ones win and succeed, others who try harder and want to do the same can also achieve the same results. So the person who wins and succeeds is the one who is absolutely certain that he can. The one who begins to work harder from the start and tries to continue with full interest and persistence surely succeeds.

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If anyone thinks that he/she has limited talents, skills and techniques to perform well for own progress then I strongly feel that they need to rethink. They can be proved wrong. One of the moments of truth is that we have the essential gift from God to do anything that we really and truly wanted and seriously desired in life. No one or nothing can stop you if you have an urge to move ahead with vigour.

The other major truth is that we all have a great drive, a powerful determination, and a burning desire hidden somewhere in our subconscious mind and when activated this will easily compensate us for all our limitations. We must immediately start looking for this power, this unique capacity, this human capability and this secret of modern living. This is our hidden talent that we have to quickly search carefully and find it ourselves. Activate this now and you will never regret.

There is absolutely no reason why everyone cannot do this. You must find the gift that is hidden within you. I can give you a few guidelines to start the ball rolling.

We all have problems in our lives and face many challenges but the person who converts all these into opportunities turns out to be better prepared to face all difficulties. Opportunities are always there as beautiful as the birds that are flying with good style and fair speed. You have to capture these with determination and courage.

All individuals are different in their abilities and you may not be perfect but you have parts within you that are beautiful and useable.

These must be fully used to develop our skills so that our performance is effective and efficient for us. Do not compare yourself with others but just do your best. If you are happy with your performance than nothing else matters. Inch by inch everything becomes a certainty and you begin to love your achievements. This process of human development is gradual but it is certain if you are serious.

Let me tell you that there is nothing impossible for an energetic, a dedicated and a committed young person. For a positive thinker

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“impossible” is the dirtiest word. You will definitely succeed if you can get the real feeling of “umph” in all your triumph.

We all have been told that the man made computers perform unbelievable tasks for us but we forget that we are the Nature-Made computers capable of performing a lot more miracles. Our brain is the greatest computer on earth and can perform many tasks so we have to use it to our advantage. The time to begin is now because time and tide wait for no one.

Our Natural Drives are our gift and with our human energy we are capable of doing better each day we wake up in the morning.

Remember to see that you have the right direction and the correct path in front of you. Just love what ever you are doing and do it well.

I love this poem and I am sure this would provide more meaning to you that we do have the greatest gift from Nature and that is our determination to start anew.

When doubts and fears are growing, It’s hard to keep on going From day to day not knowing Just what the end will be.

Take each day as you find it, If things go wrong, don’t mind it, For each day leaves behind it A chance to start anew.

Anon….

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Lecture 11

Proper Planning Pays Proper planning not only pays but also is vital to all types of human activities and achievements. In fact proper planning assists us in getting the work completed effectively as well as efficiently. It also motivates us to keep moving ahead at a right pace and in the right direction.

Planning for all your work and life style activities enables you to decide why, how, when, what and where these can be performed in the best possible way. Once you have all these ideas then success is guaranteed.

In simple terms planning is to look into the future and prepare fro all your activities carefully and with sound judgment. Naturally, a lot of thinking has to go into this task because we must be certain of our results. Three important questions have to be considered seriously.

What activities are we going to do?

What results are we expecting?

What is the best way of doing these?

It is now easy to understand that proper planning is one of the prime ways of solving our difficult problems. We have to look to the future with hope, belief, trust and faith.

Then what appears to be an impossible task can become a temporary roadblock to ingenuity if proper planning is not done before attempting to solve the problem. Of course, with the help of your people, your own actions, all the available facts and your powerful imagination, you can attack the problem head-on and then take the correct route to prosperity.

The point is that more new directions have to be found for planning ahead. Your own effort, time and diligence have to be improved in

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order to plan effectively if you want to meet the oncoming challenges and the changes of the future developments.

But always remember that you are the person in charge of your future, your destiny and your entire activity therefore you must prepare your plan and ably fit into it. Your work and life must be controlled according to your plan. Some adjustments would be needed to meet the changing situations and unforeseen circumstances but you must quickly learn to follow your plan with precision.

I have always believed that if my plan is well done then the rest of my tasks become easier and manageable. However, no plan is set in concrete and is absolutely final because the more reviews and revisions you do to your plans the finer they become and then the execution of your plan is more successful.

In my life and at various workstations I have used five steps to do my planning:  Identify my target  Set a unit of performance measurement  Set the required output standard  Identify the indicators of deviation  Install an appropriate control function.

Firstly, it is important to set your objectives and know quite clearly what has to be done and what is the time frame of your task.

Secondly, it pays to set the standard of performance and productivity where you get your resources right. These are your own and other skills available, the needed equipments and materials and the funds needed to implement the plan.

Thirdly, some understanding of workflow is vital. You must know where your work comes from and where is it heading.

Fourthly, remember to keep a contingency plan ready if things do not work according to your plan. Alternatives, possibilities of

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postponement, deferment and prioritizing are important for the success of your plan.

Finally, some control is needed to ensure that time; cost, quality and quantity are not compromised. Some people establish and follow a preset plan and pattern of development for work and life whereas others who are more motivated individuals prepare a written plan.

Whichever one you want to follow there are a few points to remember if you want your plan to be successful.

You must know and write down: (i) What must be done and by when? (ii) Who will do it? (iii) What materials are needed? (iv) What actions are required?

One of my teachers once said that when you are up to your knees in alligators, it is difficult to remember that your main objective is to drain the swamp. So be like me and do not let the pressure of immediate problems make you lose sight of your real aims and goals. This is why I emphasize that proper planning ahead of time is so important for everyone who wants to be successful.

Proper planning pays if you can exploit the four Ms of success and use the four Os formula. You will avoid all your failures if you fully understood the values of Man, Money, Method and Material of your plan and then Out-Motivate, Out-Negotiate, Out-Manage and OutSell your ideas.

It is important to know the full potential, attitude, capacity, talent, skill and knowledge of the people involved in your plan of action.

Availability and control of money needed to make the plan work is also important. Of course, your methods of executing your plan and doing things must be clear and well understood. If you use proper and appropriate methods then the result of your planning will not be faulted. Other materials that you need to plan your activities have to be scrutinized and utilized well.

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Waste not and want not may be the best policy in your efforts to plan properly.

Having settled your issues of man, money, method and material you need to find ways and means of out-motivating yourself and your people involved in your plan. If your money and material are not up to scratch you need to out-negotiate and convince your sources to grant your needs. Then it may become necessary to out-sell your method by using convincing techniques, effective communication and precise information.

Your planning would then be proper and would definitely give you good results but remember to continuously audit all your plans in order to achieve the best results. Always keep this advice in your mind when you are doing your planning.

The distance a person goes is not as important as the direction.

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Lecture 12

The Power of Imagination How can our own imagination change our life? This is one of the vital questions I have asked myself many times and my answers have always surprised me.

Our own imagination is a precious gift for us because we can use it wisely to achieve excellent results for our development. I have found out that imagination is a curious mixture of complexities and contradictions and it overflows with possibilities.

I was trained as a teacher at Nasinu Teachers’ College in Fiji and after a lapse of thirty years I met a few of my colleagues from my college days at a reunion dinner. Most of them looked gray and old and had silvery hair. They had wrinkled forehead and their physical youth had escaped a little.

We greeted each other and had a lot of useful conversation. One of them who was a good friend of mine could not resist the change in me and showed some surprise with a comment that made me think deeply. He said, “Ram, you have aged.”

Naturally his comments would have hurt somebody who was still in his fifties and was being told that so and so was looking old.

However, he did not hurt my feelings because he stated the truth. I was definitely over fifty and was beginning to look older.

What intrigued me though was his imagination. In his own imagination he was still young at his age of fifty whereas I had aged at the same age. That is what counted a lot for him and I was pleased with his feeling about himself.

Then I met another of my mates from the same gathering who after some discussion said that he too would have succeeded like me but it was unfortunate that he did not get a chance.

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I did not want to offend him for his ignorance and lack of motivation but I told him that I succeeded in my life because I created my own chances and opportunities myself and went ahead and took full advantage of those at all times. I advised him to create his own chances as well and make use of all his opportunities by fully utilizing and exploiting his imagination.

The point I am making is that we cannot crawl around on our knees nd to reach the year 2020 and go beyond into the 22 century. We should feel gratified that God has granted us the ability to be able to go wild with our imagination and dreams and do things positively.

Therefore we must get rid of all our negative feelings and accept ourselves as a person who came into this world to succeed.

Let us quickly and conveniently forget what went wrong yesterday and let us live positively from today onwards. We are no longer shy little persons of four or five years of age running in and around the house to hide when new visitors came in our front yard. We are grown ups, brave and confident people ready and fit to face every thing at any time.

When I was working as a Training Manager I came across a young shy saleslady at a training session of salespersons. She said that her poor performance was related to the lack of courage to face her sophisticated customers. I decided to develop self-confidence and courage in her by saying that all these skills come to us by trying.

Even if we get hurt, fail or lose, one thing we must never forget and that is the idea of “trying”. We must never fail to try and then keep trying and then try again because William Edward Hickson gave us the saying: “If at first you don’t succeed, Try, Try and Try again.”

I always feel that as greatness consists of trying to be great, so courage and confidence come to people who try to be brave and confident. We have to build our courage and confidence with our own motivation. We act, feel and perform our duties and

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responsibilities with our own motivation, our own imagination and our own potential.

We can control all these because these are within our power to do so. We must develop a strong will power. Our imagination and our will power are the powerhouse of our body, mind and soul. They have the capacity to set and create many successful events for us.

They can propel us to accelerated achievements.

My early objective was to find new meaning in life and strengthen my self-image through re-activation of my automatic servomechanism. I was able to do this through positive imagination.

My father as well as one of my teachers made me fit for use by telling me that I must learn to stick my neck out if I wanted to progress because they said that a turtle never makes progress until it sticks its neck out. That was exactly what I did and I began to progress.

At age fifteen my imagination was a storehouse of negative thoughts, which let me to worry a lot and agitate. I had fear of taking in the class but I could write reasonable answers to my examination questions. As soon as I stood in front of the class or any audience I forgot everything and froze. How did I overcome this deficiency?

My father was a village headman and whenever there was any community gathering he was asked to say a few words to inspire people. However, one day when he was asked to speak at a social gathering he told the people that his son would replace him and say a few words that day. I could not let my father down, nor could I disobey him so I had to stand up and speak.

I imagined that everyone sitting in the audience was ignorant about what I was going to tell them. I imagined that I had a religious book in front of me and was reading from it to the people. After about ten minutes when I stopped speaking, amidst clapping of the audience, I felt the tap of my father’s strong hand on my shoulder and I knew that I had lived up to his expectations.

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This episode developed my self-confidence because I used my imagination positively. That night while walking home my father gave me some very valuable lessons in the art of effective communication. Good communication would result if we spoke concisely, confidently and clearly.

He gave me the most powerful skill of public speaking when he told me to:  Stand up so that the audience can see you properly.  Speak up so that the audience can hear you well.  Sit down when you have nothing more to say.

Whenever I used this lesson my audience enjoyed my presentations and felt happy.

Whatever is imagined in the inner space of our minds lays a solid groundwork for us in reality. We become what we think. This is the power of imagination. Now and here is our opportunity to go wild with our imagination.

Some poet has given us a lot to ponder: There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.

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Lecture 13

Learn to Direct Yourself Directing for some of us means to show or tell the way to others as well as ourselves. If we have to direct others we either give orders or tell others what to do but to direct ourselves is a lot more difficult act and task to perform. This requires special skills of persuasion.

We must put in good and sound suggestions in our subconscious mind. These auto-suggestions will assist us to give us positive directions to move ahead systematically and continuously.

There is a powerful relationship between our mind and body.

Whatever good vibes we plant into our mind can tell our body to move in a particular direction. Our soul has a kind of willpower that can drive us towards what we want to achieve.

Let me illustrate this with a true story. The best track record of Glynis Nunn (Athlete Olympic Gold Medallist) was 13.17 seconds and this reached to 13.01 seconds in 1984. She discovered and was convinced that the mind plays a much bigger part in our achievement than what we are able to recognize.

Two nights before her Olympic race in Los Angeles, she had a dream that she ran the race in 13.01 seconds in the hurdle and she also dreamed about flowers. The next morning she received flowers from her husband Chris and a family friend Tom. Since part of her dream came true she was convinced that the other part would come true as well.

The following day as she was training she kept directing herself to winning the race in 13.01 seconds. When she crossed the line after the race next day she looked up at the time board that read 13.01 seconds. Her dream of flowers and the 13.01 seconds both came true because she directed her mind to reach that goal. You too can learn to direct yourself to reach your goals.

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Human mind is divided into two parts- the conscious and the subconscious. Our conscious mind attends to matters that attract our immediate attention one at a time. While our sub-conscious mind is tuned in to one programme, it is tuned out of all others. Our conscious behaviour is influenced by our sub-conscious mind.

Our sub-conscious mind is concerned with matters that are crucial to our survival. If this part of our mind goes to rest then we would not be able to live because it controls our breathing, heartbeat, circulation of blood and digestion. It can be compared with a fertile field capable of producing healthy crops but can get noxious weeds if it is not looked after properly.

It absorbs all the needed information that flows into our conscious mind. So every word we speak, every sentence we read and everything we see is stored away in our sub-conscious mind. This influences all our actions and character. Thus, we have the power to regulate all information that reaches our sub-conscious mind through our five senses and programme ourselves to change our thinking patterns to conform to the new image we desire.

Therefore, it is thought that we can properly direct ourselves and reprogramme our sub-conscious mind at critical times of the day. We can fill our sub-conscious mind with suitable images half an hour before we drop off to sleep at night or half an hour after our eyes open from our sleep in the morning. We can condition and prepare our mind with images and commands of our choice. We can give direct orders to our mind to do greater deeds.

We can feed our mind with these kinds of orders, images and commands: “I am a healthy person. I am physically fit and have a sound mind in my healthy body. I am capable of achieving excellent results in whatever I do.

I enjoy my life to the fullest. I am an honest person capable of achieving high productivity and I love my work.�

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“I enjoy good, sound and untroubled sleep. I do not get disturbed when I am sleeping and I wake up fully refreshed, full of energy to begin my work effectively. I have pride in my organization. I enjoy my life to the fullest.�

You can modify these images and commands to suit your needs but it would be a good idea to record these on a cassette tape that you can play regularly at the two given times. Make as many similar images as you want to keep feeding your sub-conscious mind and you will begin to see some positive results.

This is how we can be properly directed to achieve greater success and peace in our daily lives. Remember to keep preparing your cassette tapes containing you best orders and images very truthfully.

Giving direction to your mind to improve your own image is not difficult if you are determined to become a better person.

Our need to direct ourselves has become more important because everything now being done is going to be done differently. In fact the call of the current time is to do it better, and if we do not do it, our competitors will.

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Lecture 14

Control Your Life We have talked about proper planning and directing ourselves in order to do well in life. Now is the time to talk about proper controls and order in our life. We need orderliness around us if we are to succeed in all our activities. Learning to control our emotions, movements and thoughts is very important. It is difficult to live a happy life if our life is full of uncontrolled activities and emotions.

There are many aspects of our life that we need to control sensibly.

These include our emotions, our actions, our speech, our thinking and our family life. Many of us need anger management because we lose our temper easily on petty matters. Some of us need to control our poor habits of telling lies. Others need to keep a check and balance on such things as personal cleanliness. Yet there are some of us who love to get into unnecessary conflicts.

Through proper controls of these aspects of life we are able to build strong self-image and overcome many of our confusions and troubles. If we treasure and promote good and acceptable human emotions of love, friendship, kindness and peaceful living then we develop good relationship with all around us.

Love is an essential human feeling that creates harmony in the family and the community. Love for our family members, our pets, our country and our people is essential for us to enjoy our life. We learn to love because we find some aspects of truth, beauty and goodness in the people or things we love and to be able to look for and find these important traits can be difficult but exhilarating. When we are able to see the difference between unconditional and conditional love we are able to control this feeling to our advantage.

A friend in need is a friend indeed. We must choose our friends carefully and to be able to do this safely we need to know what are the qualities of a good friend. We should know that the greatest gift couldn’t be found in a store or under a tree but in the hearts of true

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friends. So the only way to have a friend is to be one. We will have a happy life if we love our friends, respect them and behave ourselves to make them respect us. If we are able to control this aspect of our life then all our friends are people who know all good and bad about us and still like us.

There is no limit to human kindness, courtesy and good conduct.

There is no reason why we cannot display absolute kindness when we deal with our friends and family members or any other person.

Show of good conduct and common human courtesies like “sorry, thank you, excuse me, I beg your pardon, please� etc should never be forgotten when we interact with anyone. These aspects of good manners would only come to us if we were able to keep a good control on them and ensure that we always used them well.

The world our human beings live in must show all signs of peace and harmony. If we are at peace within ourselves then we can see peace around us. To be peaceful in our disposition requires discipline and control over our words, thoughts and actions.

Violence, fights, quarrels and wars have never helped us in any form or shape therefore we must keep control of all our behaviours that lead us towards these dangerous elements. Whenever an agree feeling disturbs us we should stop and count up to ten. These ten seconds will pay us handsomely to lead a peaceful life.

There are many similar things and habits that can fortify, strengthen and motivate us to be good human beings but we must first learn to control our destiny and develop a strong self-image. Our own beautiful picture of our own selves is the most enlightening experience for us. We have to find out WHO we are by becoming wiser, honest and organized.

Building a new and better picture or self-image of our selves is very important but we have to get a deeper understanding of our own human qualities such as love, affection, kindness and all human courtesies. This would be possible if we can order a quick control and change in our way of life. If we can keep a control on our way of life then it becomes easier to guide and control others in your family

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and community. We would be able to boast that everyone in our community leads by example and presents good role models for others to follow.

We should quickly learn that our past is part of what we are today but we cannot dwell on our yesterday and remain there if there was not much to respect and honour our history. Bad, confusing and dirty examples of our family and communal history can be improved through improved and better control on our present and future activities. Our complete understanding of our present actions and ideas will enable us to build our tomorrow on a very firm and solid foundation. Thus we will be able to order ourselves and control our actions to transform our self-image by putting some of our negative feelings and qualities far away in the past. We would clearly look at our life more clearly and work positively.

Life as we all know has a purpose and none of us has come on this earth by accident. We have to wake up, get out and find out the real purpose of our existence. Why are we here?

We are here to enjoy our human living honourably and with dignity.

In order to do this with pride and care we need to establish various checks and balances and define our proper directions that would help us prevent uselessness and emptiness in our living standard.

When we discover some of our shortcomings we are able to exert good and unique control on our will power to gather all the courage to rise above them. The more control we exercise, the greater the internal changes would begin to take deep roots within us. Then we would see a clear difference between the person we are and the person we would like to become. This control and understanding would bring greater success us.

Self-Control is difficult but it is contagious and provides us with confidence. If we can change our preconceptions about our selfimage we can modify and transform the total way of life. Our task is to develop a worthy and large mental picture of our selves. We should not look at our past failures and brood because these would distort our positive mental picture and lead us to more frustration and

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misery. We should learn from our mistakes, never repeat them but correct them as we move forward.

Many successful and motivated people have shown us that they have changed their concept of themselves at any time and any age.

So it is never too late to begin the challenging task of controlling our life. We too can escape from the dark tomb of old yesterday by building a proud monument of our new tomorrow. Remember to erect that foundation on real and truthful platform.

We all should learn to live by some definite principles, aims, goals and objectives. Let us create a new self-image by rising above the negative feelings, distorted thoughts and defective ideas. Then we can convince ourselves that a more fruitful, richer and fuller life is a true possibility for us. We were born in this world as human beings to succeed and not to fail. We are the most enlightened creatures of our time so let us meet the challenges that lie ahead of us. This is the power we can generate through various control mechanisms.

Therefore the time is now to manufacture your enthusiasm as you move ahead and grow. Do not be afraid of the gap between your dreams and reality because I have found out that if you can dream it, then you can make it so but you have to keep trying.

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Lecture 15

Positive Mental Attitude I firmly believe that enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When we start doing anything, we should do it with all our might. Putting our whole soul into it, stamping it with our own personality and getting the best result from our efforts. We would be filled with extreme joy.

It is one of the many truths that when we are active, energetic, enthusiastic and faithful with ourselves, we would always accomplish our objective. Let me reiterate that nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. Having looked at the power of enthusiasm, I feel now is the right time to indoctrinate you with the idea of positive mental attitude (PMA).

PMA is the beginning of all truth, beauty and goodness in us, it is a reality, it is a miracle but it is not always easy to attain because we have faced and witnessed a lot of negative things in our life time. It becomes much easier to believe that this is a terrible world and we are full of problems because our own people have continuously told us that seeing is believing. We are not prepared to take any risks and try out new things for us. This is due to an innate propensity called fear. Others who constantly think that things cannot be done have influenced us. We have to think differently and ACT otherwise so that we are not held back by our own fear of failure.

A = Assertiveness – This is our power and quality of expressing ourselves positively, strongly and meaningfully.

C = Creativity - This is our ability to make the best use of our resources and invent new and positive ideas and solutions.

T = Thoughtfulness - This is our god given ability to consider, reflect and form useful and positive ideas in our mind.

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I agree that PMA is a difficult phenomenon but certainly attainable if we throw away the mask of negative feelings and regenerate our power of imagination. We need to move away from all fear and start acting and looking at positive choices that provide us with positive results. Then we would have a definite edge for progress and join the group of so many ‘Can-Do’ types of people.

If these types of developments begin to grow then it would be easy to manifest your desire to think differently and see everything in the new light. Our new and valuable thoughts and ideas would provide us with greater inspiration to act positively. We would gradually become enthusiastic, our own problem solvers and have plenty of opportunities to retrain our thoughts.

Consequently a lot of gifts of life would flow to us in abundance. We would be able to bring all our goals and objectives closer because we would have a very fertile ground for possibilities at our command.

Our dreams would slowly turn into reality. We would refuse to allow others to upset us and our tomorrow would be much better.

I have already said that possibility is the most beautiful word for a person who is looking for success in life. When we look at this word in detail we can see that any imaginable and conceivable task for us could become achievable and possible if we are able to develop our right mental attitude for it. That right mental attitude has to be positive, real and determined. This is what successful people term as positive mental attitude.

Nothing whatsoever would be impossible for us if we always worked hard and put on our best performance. Motivated people fully understand that all impossible activities are only temporary roadblocks to progress and we can definitely overcome all our problems through our ingenuity. We need to develop that courage to get out of our temporary sorrows and difficulties by acting positively with grace.

We have to develop our own system of beliefs and opinions as a strong guideline to wipe out the negative thought of impossibility.

There is a truism that haunts us and says there is no perfect life. We

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face many hardships, trials, tribulations and disappointments. A person who has learnt to be assertive, creative and thoughtful would immediately ACT and would not let any of the negative experiences change our future positive outlook. We are in total control of our thoughts and feelings.

I am not saying that we start expecting perfection immediately but we would be able to reach PMA slowly and gradually but surely.

Think of the best things that have happened to us. Let us make a list of all our successful achievements and go over them everyday at least two or three times. This would strengthen your inner thoughts to make us resilient and help us get out of all our troubles.

Change is a constant thing in our lives. Let us learn new things everyday but many of us find that we have no time for all these. I suggest just get up half an hour earlier everyday and go to bed half an hour later. This one-hour daily would be enough to add new dimension in our life. Just try this and use this extra time to extend a helping hand to those in need by becoming a volunteer. Your PMA would bounce manifolds and you would remain positive, stay creative and always win.

We must develop an attitude that there is a solution to most of our problems and we can find those solutions ourselves. If anyone thinks that there are no problems around us then they really have a big problem. We human beings are born as problem busters and problem solvers. We need three powerful tools to develop positive mental attitude and they are our self-confidence, our untarnished courage and our enthusiasm to get up and go. We have all these within us and need to activate and generate them at the right time.

Great leaders of this world had developed their own PMA and they managed to do great things in their lifetime. They all had their own dreams and visions and they firmly believed that whatever they wanted to do was humanly possible. All our successful leaders are able to see things from different point of view because they believe that PMA is a reality. We all can do this and make all our dreams come true for us and our family.

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Jeffrey Gitomer says that PMA is a self-imposed blessing and it is a philosophy for a lifetime. We have to study it, practice it and live the essence of it everyday. It is a state of mind that you determine to attain for yourself. Let me finish off this lecture with six of his formulae for attaining and sustaining positive mental attitude.  Surround yourself with positive things and positive people  Read and listen to positive books, CDs and Tapes  Say all things in a positive way  Believe you can achieve it  Do not listen to others who tell you are nuts  Start now and work at it everyday.

People who want to further develop, attain and maintain PMA should read ideas presented and written by such writers as Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill and Will Smith.

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Lecture 16

Building Self-Confidence Aldous Huxley said that there is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that is your own self. If you succeed in doing this you become a person full of self- confidence.

What is self-confidence? This is also a feeling of reality in all enlightened people. It is a feeling of certainty about oneself. It is an innate belief that we are right and can do everything and anything if we put our mind to it.

It is believed that self-confidence is a positive self-image and it is a miracle force working within us. We all need this very much if we want to be successful in life. And who does not want to be successful except that lazy person tucked away at the corner of your street. To fill you with self-confidence require discipline and selfesteem and we all have these qualities within us. As with other human qualities this needs too to be activated carefully.

What would self-confidence do for us? It would assist us to unlock all the doors to an amazing future full of exciting new developments. It would give us a brighter life ahead and help us establish very rich experiences full of good values. It is natural for us to wake up every morning with a hope of achieving a better standard in everything we do and think. We would be able to achieve all these if we strongly believe in our talents, skills and knowledge. Our self-confidence would multiply our capabilities and abilities and certainly make us out shine all our competitors.

We have seen over the years that our personality can be transformed completely if we firmly believe that we are capable of higher achievements. We must have this feeling because it gives us satisfaction and credibility in our way of living. Our difficulty is that some of us have what we term as inferiority complex. We think that we are not worthy and lack the ingredients that other successful people possess. This feeling punctures and kills their pride and self-

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respect making them lethargic and despondent. This state of mind has to be changed and changed quickly.

Any person who is fond of belittling himself can never dehypnotize himself to watch himself at his best and visualize a positive selfimage. Such people push themselves to failure and hardship. When they themselves say that they cannot reach their goals they fall into that trap and fail miserably. This was not the reason for our birth. We were born to flourish and succeed.

I am reminded of another story about a Mexican lady who worked for only a dollar a day as a new arrival in the United States but worked her way to become the trustworthy treasurer for the country because she had confidence in her abilities. The secret is that we must learn to expect a lot more from ourselves. The problem is that many of us are satisfied with our normal performance and do not attempt to rise higher than our expectations and levels of excellence.

If we have not done well so far in our life or at work, it is not that we are a dump person or a poor performer. We have not looked at the power of our self-confidence and joined that “Can Do� group that we talked about earlier. There may be many valid reasons for our inadequacies. We may have had poor and inadequate early guidance. Our learning may have suffered because of poor educational stimulus, advisors and environment.

If you in this group then you have to think of those people who began their life in a small way but they had big thoughts and became great performers. There were people who I know had speech defects but gradually became world class orators; there were yet others who had nothing but soon became millionaires; and there were weaker students who excelled and became exceptional academics all because of were able to build that super power called self-confidence and worked vigorously.

One thing we should never forget that there is always a confident person waiting to be born in us as long as we have the right vision and are ready to rise up every time we fall or slip. Success comes to those of us who want to succeed and similarly super competence

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and self-confidence goes to those who treasure these human attributes.

It is a dreadful sin to classify ourselves as incompetent but there are people in this category amongst us. They are our pulling down factors and the sooner we make them get out of that rut the better it is for all of us. Those of us who have developed our self-confidence need to spread this gospel to everyone so that we can meet the difficult challenges of the twenty-first century. One of the reasons of our slower progress and global economic slowdown is that there are fewer super competent workers amidst us. We have to reverse the situation and make all our working population learn to excel through their self-confidence and motivation.

Some human resource experts have said that only twenty percent of the workforce is competent and these are the ones who work for the other eighty percent who are either lazy, incompetent or do not want to put in their best performance all because they have lost their selfconfidence and self-esteem. They also say these human attributes are contagious and if we are able to increase our percentage of super competent performers then this world would be a better place to interact and co exist.

Let me tell you that there is no quick result for this but we can definitely build self-confidence if we are not scared but unstoppable in our attempt to keep advancing to develop good perception of ourselves. We as self-confident people can inspire similar and greater confidence in others. How can we do this?

Firstly, let us resolve to contribute positively to the needs of our community. Become a physically fit person through regular workouts and exercises. Never hide from reality but always be seen and be visible to the family, friends and foe alike. Show general gratefulness and satisfaction for all your big and small achievements alike.

Develop a list of your successful deeds and strengths and speak about these regularly. Pay proper attention to your personal grooming and posture. Show confidence in the way you talk, walk and look. Ensure that you dress well to look and feel good.

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If all these happen within and around you then no one would be able to stop and scare you to build and develop self-confidence. Your mental age would be a lot younger than your physical looks. This is your readiness and qualification to meet the demands of the future.

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Lecture 17

Affirmation Of Our Commitment We have done so little so far but we know that there is so much more to do. So let us commit ourselves to completing our remaining tasks and responsibilities with greater enthusiasm and deeper interest. We need to give a solid affirmation to this commitment.

Commitment is a very powerful tool of human progress. After establishing a strong and clear vision for our future we need to bind ourselves to our dreams and plans. We should develop an unconditional urge and complete belief in whatever we have agreed to do. We cannot be half-hearted but operate at full throttle to honour our commitment.

Very early in life we learn to commit ourselves to many small deeds.

We promise to do something or we bind ourselves to perform some work or activity. If we succeed in completing that promised task we fulfil your commitment but when we are unable to do as we promised then we get worried. Our inability to complete our committed activity would never occur if we kept affirming and reminding ourselves of our dreams and visions.

From time to time we all have committed ourselves to various tasks, life styles and activities. We have developed our vision for the future and dreamt of better living standards for us. How can we fulfil our promise to ourselves? Our firm commitment could be our drive to bring success to us in this area. We cannot let our promises turn to dust or fly away. We have to hold them tightly and carefully to understand them, observe them, scrutinize them and cherish them if we want to fulfil these promises. This is our commitment to us.

If we have committed ourselves to working harder, passing our examinations with better marks, achieving better results and getting a promotion then we need to keep reminding us of these promises until they are fulfilled. Continuous affirmation would help a lot.

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I am told that once upon a time all ants were born with wings but as time went by they tore those wings off deliberately. The ants chose to live out as crawling insects when they were given the option to be flying angels. It was almost set by nature that they were given the vast empire of air and wide atmosphere to fly and move freely. They refused. What a shame for the crawling ants!

On their wings they could have rocketed high with their imagination and be fully committed to doing whatever they dreamed about. They did not want to do this and chose to differ. We now feel that they made a mistake and sold themselves short. They had the choice to break loose, go wild with their imagination and establish their commitment to be better performers. What a drastic mistake!

This is what happens to us if we fail to affirm, renew and remind ourselves of our commitment. We have been given the power to commit ourselves and excel in every activity that we indulge in. We would be accepting lower rewards if we do not fulfil all our promises because in fact the reward of all human beings is that they can do greater things and the sky is the limit for them. If they turn out to be the ones who choose not to be affirmative about their commitment then they are at fault.

When we make affirmation about something we have imagined and become fully committed to these activities then we are simply making a factual statement such as: “If others are able to do this, then I can do it too.” Your firm belief in this philosophy, “that there is a better life in store for me in the future” would lead you to get out of your mental cage and fly. This is your ultimate choice. Get committed to your beliefs and keep affirming these undertakings continuously.

Beginning in a small way would take us to great things. This is like a child learning to crawl before walking and running. We all can begin to discover our future ourselves and begin our long journey of a thousand miles with our first bold and calculated step. If others are doing it then why should we procrastinate and keep waiting for our turn to come. Why walk if we can run to reach our destination? Let us wake up and make a promise to ourselves that we would bring

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about greater changes to the way we operate every day. This would be your commitment to yourself and you cannot deceit yourself.

We know that curiosity is the mother of creativity. Let us relax for a while and think deeply. We can generate a positive mental climate that would throw out possible vibes and make us churn out new and creative ideas. We should collect these worthy autosuggestions and convert them to our firm commitment. We can create a love for what we do. Our life would run smoothly and we would be happily committed to our work.

One has to create a love for what one does because love brings out real feelings in everything we do. Once we learn to love our work, our home, our organization, our family and friends then our total commitment and pride for these areas increase considerably.

All our buried dreams are resurrected, our sleeping enthusiasm sparks off a fresh beam and our silent glowing charcoals flicker and burst into new flames if we have the right commitment to everything we decide to do. Therefore it is a good idea to be committed to our imagination and keep affirming all our ideas, our vision and our dreams.

Every person who wants to be creative has a strong commitment. To become creative we must first learn to respect, trust and admire our own thoughts and ideas. Then we develop into an inventive pathfinder and ask four specific questions when an idea or an innovation dwells around us. Is this a practical idea? Is it a pace setting innovation? Is it an inspiring suggestion? Is it an excellent suggestion?

Agreeing to listen carefully to the thoughts of other successful people and taking care to treasure our own views would definitely provide us with good, thoughtful, valuable and sensible answers to these questions. So let us LISTEN but you can only listen when you are able to un-jumble the word and become SILENT. When we are silent we listen better.

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It is during such valuable times when we are meditating, thinking and observing that our commitment is affirmed and we move forward without fear.

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Lecture 18

Clear and Creative Thinking To be able to think clearly and creatively we must devote much of our time to these aspects of our living. Sooner or later we find out that too many people have lost sight of the true values of clear thinking because they are overwhelmed by the present day technology and overpowered by the materialistic pressures. This loss is so tragic at times that it affects us negatively. I cannot emphasise this enough that clear and creative thinking is one of the major basis of our growth and development.

To be able to think well we need to generate and develop a sense of urgency for all our activities. This means that we have to manage our time effectively at all times. Of the twenty-four hours in a day we spend about eight hours sleeping, about three hours eating and drinking and then our daily commuting to work or school takes at least an hour. So we have lost twelve hours easily. From the remaining twelve hours we have to spare at least a few hours on leisure activities for our family and ourselves. In fact we are left with only eight hours of productive time that we must learn to manage carefully.

Time is money in the material world and we do not have a choice but to use our time effectively. In order to do this well we need to motivate ourselves. There are three ways we can do this. Incentive motivation based on rewards. Fear motivation based on punishment.

Attitudinal motivation based on clearer thinking.

Incentive motivation can be explained with a story of a buffalo and a farmer. A buffalo was pulling a wooden cart down a dirty country road. A farmer was sitting in the cart with a long pole which had a rope tied down at the end of it. A bundle of green grass was dangling from the rope in front of the buffalo. This buffalo then moved forward to eat the grass if it felt hungry. This type of motivation eventually wears out and is based on the need of the person being satisfied. If

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the buffalo does not feel hungry and does not need the grass then it would not pull the cart.

Fear motivation starts when the farmer removes the bundle of grass and uses the pole to beat the buffalo. If the buffalo is afraid of this beating then it moves forward to pull the cart. It would soon become immune to beating and stop pulling the cart. Even this type of motivation would not produce the desired result forever.

Pic 1: The Buffalo is willing to pull the cart because it wants to help the farmer.

Pic 2: The unwilling buffalo is beaten to pull the cart because it is stubborn.

Pic 3: The buffalo is given hay as motivation to pull the cart because it needs incentive.

I believe that an individual does not need either incentive motivation to be lured with a prize or fear motivation to be driven with a whip. A person requires clear thinking and can be moved forward by own positive mental attitude. This is called attitudinal motivation and is based on our own enthusiasm, energy and thoughts. If we have the right attitude for whatever we want to do then there is nothing there to stop us from moving ahead at our own pace.

Attitudinal motivation demands that we manage our time well. We must take the time to think clearly and creatively because this would provide us the needed power to do anything. We would find the secret of continuous progress if we learnt to take the time to play and exercise regularly. If we took time to do extensive reading it

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would give us the foundation of wisdom to tackle any task easily and methodically.

If we took enough time to give then, as Bill Clinton says, we would learn to be unselfish and increase our own knowledge to turn all the impossible tasks to possible accomplishment. Giving is the greatest gift for all human beings: we give advice, assistance, love, lessons, money, material and many other things to people who are in need and in doing so we enrich our own thinking and actions. By giving more to others we fill our own minds and life with added laughter, friendliness, enjoyment and carefulness. These would make us fully prepared to interact and control all our activities well.

Thus a platform for clear and creative thinking is established within us and as the time moves on we are able to strengthen our mental attitude to motivate us the way we desire. Our desire becomes our take-off point. We are able to control our thoughts in such a way that nothing seems difficult for us. We become a “Go Go� individual and begin to move with added speed and motivation.

We are able to create a situation where we never rush into any overt actions. First we ponder and then we are able to weigh and assess the character of our thinking. No matter how busy, we are able to find time and take time to crystallize our character and our thinking in such way that we are able to meet success at every step of our life.

We would soon learn that in these difficult economic times our best efforts are not good enough because a lot more would be expected from us to meet the increasing challenges.

I have learnt that the main difficulty with clear and creative thinking is confusion. We try to do too much in our mind at once instead of finding some simple way of paying attention to one thing at a time. In this way we are able to build a map, which would tell us where we are and where we wish to go. It would be a lot easier to take appropriate action. Thus we can become a master-thinker and learn to think to win. The end result is that we win by thinking clearly and creatively. We long to improve and overcome all our difficulties when we begin to think well. This search for self-improvement is becomes our only goal.

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When any types of distractions invade your mind, when negative feelings threaten you, and when a bee is about to sting you- what do you do to overcome these? You spontaneously fight them off vigorously. Having done that you then think carefully to make sure that it does not happen again. That is your motivation to improve and overcome. You have the power to rise above all blunders and misfortunes if you think clearly and creatively.

For many of us clear and creative thinking means discipline to live well in the present world. Self-respect is the heartbeat of creative and clear thinking but it requires that we build total faith in ourselves.

We must have faith in our talents and skills.

All successful thinkers yield to positive impulses when these arise in their minds. You too can be positively impulsive if you take immediate actions and steps when the waves of positive impulses move in front of you. Wake up, come alive, snap the cords of laziness, break the chains of lethargy and make up your mind to act immediately. Think quickly and take advantage of the opportunity that knocks at your door.

Bill Cosby says that we must search for the big YOU within you and let it come out to achieve excellent results for you. You must help yourself become the person you would like to be. You will be the winner if you think that way. Accept yourself not only as you are but as you can become when you are able to find that better and bigger YOU within yourself. Always remember that through your clear and creative thinking and your proactive stance you have the power to unearth the hidden resources within you.

You have heard this said before, “As a human being thinks, so shall he become.� This becomes your guarantee when your thinking is clear and creative and your goals are sharply defined. Your most rewarding competition is with yourself. Do it now.

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Lecture 19

Relax and Succeed.

Success of any person can be explained in multiple ways but the first thing to remember about success is that it is a very important issue for all enlightened and enterprising human beings. The next point is equally vital because success is an achievable idea for everyone.

Let me make a few introductory remarks to really motivate you to move faster towards success. Then I will tell you how to succeed.

For an enterprising person success is a journey and not a destination. A successful person keeps moving towards greater deeds and actions and would not just stop and relax at the first successful venture. We never reach a success point in our life or at work and stop there but we keep proceeding and moving with added vigour and enthusiasm throughout our life and meeting various challenges and experiencing success after success. This is what we term as perseverance.

All hardworking individuals see success as a ladder and not an escalator. Through our consistent and persistent efforts we are determined and able to climb up the ladder step by step without waiting for someone else to switch on the escalator for us. There is no easy and quick way to reach the top. There are no escalators around in this area of human pursuit for us to climb in and switch the button on to take us upwards easily. We have to plan our success.

There are many techniques of bringing success into your life. If we are fully motivated to develop our required and inherent determination we would be able to set excellent goals in our life and at work. These would only happen if we learnt to fully concentrate on all our aims and objectives in life. So if we are determined goal setters with effective concentration techniques then we have the necessary motivation to look for and seek the new directions to exploit and work for our advantage.

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Anything short of these would work against us and these tough times would turn out to be a lot more tougher for us until one day we would find that it is very difficult to overcome our problems. Our ease would bring a lot of disease for us in life.

If material welfare were your yardstick for success then our material welfare would be equal to our ability to develop appropriate technological tools to exploit the natural resources with best of human energy. This should enable the responsible people to keep a balance between the concern for people and concern for productivity. We would not inflict any harm on others in achieving our aim of increased productivity and quality. Then and then only we would be regarded as successful people and yet have a relaxing mood in life.

In order to develop a relaxing mood among us and yet be able to move well into the territory of success, we need to fully understand ourselves and the people we interact with everyday. It has been said that proper human understanding is one of the keys to successful living.

Before fully understanding and appreciating the nature and living of human beings we need to develop some rules of relaxation in our own life. These are only a few ideas that we can put into practice for better human understanding.  Stop holding grudges against anyone you interact with  Learn to look at things from the other person’s point of view  Remember your past successes and use them to educate others  Do not run away from yourself failures, be realistic  Erect a fountain of good ideas in your mind  Avoid a clenched fist situation and all kinds of tension  Be always ready and eager to give all you can  Cherish and practice smiling at all things, events and people  Accept other people’s weaknesses  Attain tranquillity by being calm and collected at all times

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    

Stand up with a resolution for yourself and others Refuse to permit tensions to overpower you Develop good habits and destroy the feeling of despair Be confident at all times Throw away the worst of your frustrations as soon as you notice them  By forgiving yourself you learn to forgive others.

By putting some of these and all your ideas about relaxation you would be able to search and find a better YOU. As long as we live, everyday is a day for daily growth, a daily enterprise and a new experience. Adjust your life today to the realities of tomorrow but never forget your yesterday. Just learn to separate the facts from fantasy by never downgrading yourself or anyone else. Accept yourself for whatever you are and never pretend. You would never feel very good if you spend your time trying to be someone else. Be yourself but you can learn from the ideas of great people.

Be relaxed and neither hide behind the curtain nor avoid the right actions. Just develop and create bigger and greater opportunities for yourself and your family. After you have developed a relaxed mind you can understand things better to meet success at every step.

How can you do this?           

Be tolerant of others and their behaviour and words Avoid expecting people to be perfect because no one is Ensure that you genuinely want to serve and assert people Look for goodness, truth and beauty in yourself and others Learn to love change, renewal and the unlovable Hate the things that are evil not the person Control your reactions, attitude and actions Develop a positive mental attitude Know your strengths and talents Detect your weaknesses and overcome the threats Time is money so try to fully use it and do not abuse it.

So let us learn to succeed by always be in a relaxed mood for achieving the best results and healthy outcomes.

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Lecture 20

Happiness is Helpful Happiness is a very helpful habit for all successful human beings. If you are delighted, pleased or glad about something you have reached a stage of happiness in your daily living.

Happiness comes to those of us who have pleasure in doing things and are pleased to interact healthily with everyone. When we try hard to seek ways and means to enjoy everything at work, at home and in life generally we are on a road to complete happiness.

Many people of this world are definitely happy and do not need to be reminded to change but there are many around us who are caught in sadness and despondency. They need help and it is our duty to assist them to walk on the pleasant road of happiness.

There are at least ten solid commandments to enable any person to proceed to complete happiness in life. We should preach and practice these habits to make our community a better place to coexist.  

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Speak to everyone clearly, concisely and confidently with cheerful greetings and polite words.

Since it takes a lot more effort to frown than to smile, we must ensure that we use this ammunition of good relationship effectively and freely. A smile does not cost us anything but it pays us very high returns.

Given name is the best thing a person possesses and it sounds sweet to the ears when our name is used in the proper way. It is helpful to remember and use the accepted names of your friends and relatives when communicating with them. Do not call people by names they do not approve of or do not like.

When we are friendly and helpful to everyone it is natural that others begin to respond in the like manner. The more

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





 

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we befriend our people and the more we assist them the greater would be their reciprocal response.

Speak and act as if everything you do were a genuine pleasure and take pride in doing things for everybody. Love for your work and pride in your organization are both vital feelings.

If we are genuinely interested in all the people we deal with then we create a very harmonious relationship with each other. People then interact freely and happily thus making everything look possible and cool.

If we are generous with our praise for all things and behaviour that are good, beautiful and truthful then we would always be happy. However, when you have to criticize things and behaviour of people you have to be very careful and cautious and do it wisely.

Everyone would appreciate it if you were humble and considerate with the feelings of others. Your consideration would give you and your friends a lot of joy.

Be thoughtful of the opinions and views of other people but remember to give your support to the right and logical ones.

Be consistent with your support and allegiance if you want to be happy.

It counts a lot if you want to give service to others with sincerity. Effective and efficient service in all areas has become the most powerful tool of human interaction and personal satisfaction.

To reach a complete state of happiness should be the ultimate objective of every motivated person. Happiness does not mean that we have no problems, no difficulties and barriers around us. In fact no day is problem free occasion for us but we do feel excited and are elated if we are able to overcome our difficulties with happiness.

This feeling of freedom from bondage makes us full of self-respect and we are honoured. Words that make us feel happy are many but let us look at these four: contentment, satisfaction, freedom and enthusiasm.

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When we attain contentment, we feel that we are free from all bonds, we are fully satisfied and this is our enthusiasm that leads us to complete happiness. We feel good that we have achieved whatever we could. We got whatever we desired. We have achieved our objectives.

Unhappiness is a negative feeling and makes us less than what we are and what we want to become. It reduces our thinking power. It diminishes our efforts and decreases our enthusiasm to move ahead with speed and accuracy.

Happiness on the other hand is a positive feeling because it increases our stature as a strong human being enabling us to make a worthwhile contribution in life, at workplace and in the community generally. Happiness lifts up and enhances our general self-esteem and it helps us to rise to our total potential and produce more.

I believe that happiness gives us a rolling stone type of effect. To be happy one must stop hating everything around by avoiding little faults. One must decide between disbelief and belief. One must have the courage to win out over all negative attitudes by using ones imagination creatively and productively. This can be done by giving the best of service to others and feeling that you are needed in the community and the society. We get real pleasure when we learn to give service without the thought of profit.

Whatever we make for ourselves can be lost but whatever we give to others is our greatest asset if we give happily. Giving happiness to everyone is difficult but it is not impossible. Happiness is definitely contagious. So let us spread this good feeling to everyone around us by smiling inside and making warm feeling a part of daily living. Let us learn to laugh because laughing and smiling are great ingredients of happiness and when they are genuine they act as purifying agents.

We should not retire from life but continue to nourish our being with the emotional and spiritual feeling of contentment. Seek more activities that will make you happier. Keep yourself busy by creating a balance for work, play and relaxation.

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Happiness for me has been an internal feeling. All of us can find it if we looked around us hard enough. Happiness is one item that multiplies by division. So the more we divide our happiness by giving friendly service to others the greater becomes our wisdom and joy of living as successful people.

When I began to work as a teacher I got married and wanted to live a happy life. I decided to work hard in order to have a happy family life. I became an effective teacher and I was rewarded with a scholarship to do further studies. I kept moving ahead with determination and kept getting many promotions and rewards at work. All these made me happy and the joy was shared in the community in many ways.

I started helping people with their accounting work. I gave administrative services to small business people. I also did a lot of voluntary tuition to students who wanted to excel in their schoolwork.

I acted as consultant to many farmers and small business people to advice them about insurance, education and family issues.

These economic, social, religious and professional activities kept me busy and happy but gave me a lot of opportunities to learn from interacting with a variety of people. I was active in the community to do religious work, trade union activities and giving lectures at seminars and meetings of youth and older citizens.

All these meant happiness for my family and me. We kept ourselves busy and maintained our happy family life. My success and happiness could be attributed to the support and cooperation of my wife and four children.

Today we are happy to look back at all our contributions and participations to make our life and work a successful and adventurous happening. We are happy that we were able to work together and achieve good results. We loved our existence and interactions whatever, however, whenever and wherever they were given because they were given with joy. So everyone who wants to be happy can do much more than we were able to do in our lifetime.

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People who go on the road to happiness can definitely be very successful. This is the reason I advocate that Happiness is Helpful for Human Habitation.

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Lecture 21

Discover Yourself and Win Self-discovery has been a key to the success of many motivated people because those of us who have discovered our full potential have seen winning streaks in our life. We have won great prizes and awards.

When it comes to talking about self-discovery we look at a lot of powerful things that are hidden within us. These include our selfesteem, confidence, pride, determination, control, acceptance, skills and knowledge. Those of us who have managed to explore and discover these elements early in life have seen success and achievements because they have put these to better use for their development. This voyage of exploration and discovery has to be an ongoing adventure because every new day would bring a lot of brilliant ideas and workable directions for us.

The aim of every motivated person should be to conduct this selfdiscovery and self-exploration adventures with persistence and determination. Calvin Coolidge the US president in 1921 made a very relevant point on persistence and this should help us march forward with greater determination.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.

Talent will not; Genius will not; and Education alone will not.

Persistence and determination are omnipotent.”

This voyage of discovery must begin with a positive step, which should definitely take you towards what we call the proper sense of direction. When you are successful in discovering your ‘SELF’ then you would be able to see a very large improvement of your selfimage because you would be able to uproot the garbage of all the despair clattering in your mind. You would be able to fully understand and cooperate with your very enlarged ‘SELF’.

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There would be no power to stop you from convincing you that you are a true winner of all points and for all activities. You would be able to continuously encourage the truth, beauty and goodness inside you. You would be able to confidently select your goals and overcome your limitations. You would be able to select the scenario of tomorrow with the strong and positive belief of today.

When I went on this wonderful voyage of self-discovery I kept trying to see myself as my big ‘SELF’ and not as my little ‘SELF’. Thus I was able to build my enthusiasm to achieve all my objectives and learn to live creatively. Not only these but I was able to resolve to understand the needs of others as well as my own by looking for facts not fantasies. I then was able to live on solid grounds of selfdevelopment.

All winners seek to find their real self, true personality and advance towards their realistic goals. However, when they falter, they develop a strong feeling of retrying and redoing the same activities and ensure that they succeed. So it is always advisable to discover and rediscover your true capabilities and then channel them correctly. By telling your friends and colleagues about your successful adventures and discoveries you are going to enhance their chances of success but you too would feel better with your own efforts.

Through your self-discovery you would learn to conquer all fears and failures. Then step by step all your frustrations, aggressiveness, insecurity, loneliness, uncertainty, resentment and emptiness would be destroyed. You would look like a new you full of energy to take all the challenges facing you.

No one else can make you get these positive feelings. Like Alexandra the Great, you too have to be your own conqueror of your negativity. You would feel confident and stand tall in the community.

You would stop to live with yesterday’s ideas and quickly learn to advance with new vision and brilliant ideas for your future. No one can stop you then.

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All successful people have been moving ahead despite some of their tensions, pains, rejections and disappointments. They did not brood on these weaknesses and look for a retreat but they advanced with greater vigour and enthusiasm by setting new goals everyday, revising these frequently to suit their needs and wants. They always were sure of their actions to turn their slight decrease in progress to speedy recovery.

We all know that greatness consists of trying to be great and not giving up hope. So we cannot stop short changing ourselves but to try and try again until we meet success. We are an important unit in this world so we must reactivate our energy and capability to find a better way to live and work. This will be your new discovery and you will be proud of your potentials.

Many years ago a village priest told me that our resentment and our fear were the two main tools that crippled and stopped us from going towards a new discovery. We do not like new changes and have fear about them but the sooner we overcome these negative thoughts the faster and quicker we would move towards self-fulfilment and achieve a winning position in life.

Therefore if I were you, I would quickly move to act and get going to shake up the negative forces within you and become a stronger individual and a more powerful person. You should break up the obstacles, shatter all the barriers and take up the new task of selfdiscovery that is your destiny. This is how you would keep on winning in your life and at your work.

If you want to win you should not delay your actions but act immediately. If inertia, delay or procrastination set in to start your self-discovery then you would repent it all your life. Having discovered your real self you may like to ask yourself a very important question.

What kind of a person am I? I have seen a variety of people in life that you can compare yourself with. I would use bones to describe these types of people.

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Firstly, there are the Jawbone types of people who talk too much and are not able to match their words with appropriate actions. Too much talk and very little work is their habit. In other words this person is a Yap Yap person.

Secondly, there are the Wishbone types of people who keep wishing for things without actually planning and doing anything concrete to achieve their wishes. Their wishing habits are like empty vessels that do not carry anything valuable. I think such people are like a Yo Yo moving up and down, never constant or steady but dreamers and delayers.

Thirdly, there are the knucklebone types of people who feel good to knock down all good ideas and destroy all workable suggestions of sensible people. They are the destructive elements in the community never in favour of anyone progressing in life. Such are the NO NO people who are never willing to start anything good. They say no to everything, full of excuses.

Then we have the lazy bone types of people who do not want to do any work but love to laze around at all times. Their laziness becomes an epidemic and spreads fast if we are not careful to motivate them quickly to get up and move for their own progress. We can also call them the Blow Blow people who think big, talk big but back off just when they should move ahead.

Finally there are the backbone types of people who always stand strong energetic and full of enthusiasm always willing to support the right cause of action at the right time. They are as powerful as our backbone that supports our whole body. These are the Go Go people who think big, talk big but also perform big deeds. They are the true winners in all the fields of human endeavour. They always surge ahead to succeed.

Who are you? The backbone type of person I suppose. The whole community depends on you and your actions. You have to discover this type of person within you if you want to win.

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Now you should have already properly discovered yourself. My task is to see that you behave like the Go Go person and be the Backbone type of person.

You cannot put this off for another day or delay it any more because procrastination is the thief of time and is your greatest enemy. Act now and discover yourself properly.

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Lecture 22

Turn Your Liabilities into Assets Basically all motivated human beings are supposed to be tough and determined. If that is the case then such people are ever ready to have mental and spiritual facelift and perform any difficult and complex tasks with greater ease.

Once people become aware of their intrinsic toughness they develop the capacity and capability of an experienced boxer to come back off the floor, wipe their gloves clean in spite of shaky legs and battle back to become a winner. They refuse to be defeated and quickly learnt to fight with all their might.

Nothing can hold them back if they are so determined to move ahead. They know how to look for and find their correct place in the community and build their self-reliance everyday. They refuse to make mountains out of molehills. In fact they are ready to open their clenched fist of tension and quickly replace their frown with a big smile.

To battle and gain full self-respect become their greatest goal in life and they turn out to be the most modern detectives who are boldly out to track down the best things in life. Nothing can come in the way for them to stop their progress. Thus they are able to see themselves at their best and march vigorously towards personal improvement and doing peak performance with confidence.

If this is the real possibility in life then why should anyone remain a person full of frustrations and wait at the bottom of the ladder of progress? The challenge is to accept you as the greatest performer and utter like Mohammed Ali did. “I am the greatest!� You would witness huge improvements at every step by matching your dreams and visions with concrete actions.

If you have come so far with me and have learnt to be motivated then you have to forget the shortfalls, mistakes and poor

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performance of yesterday and stop looking backwards to some of your heartaches. Wake up, stand up and run forward to grab the millions of opportunities lying ahead of you. This can be done by building courage and developing your creative insights for all your activities.

Understanding yourself and becoming fully aware of all your talents and abilities means that you have the necessary power and dignity to do greater and more worthy tasks. Extend and take the power and dignity that you discovered within yourself to a new height. Make this your full time job.

You are beginning to turn all your liabilities into assets and you will soon be called a fully motivated person ready to take the challenges of the 21st Century. Keep moving.

By utilizing compassion we can create a sound basis for morality, which in turn can easily be used to help us as well as the people around us. No man is an island therefore, when you decide to move ahead in a new direction you must ensure that you are in a good company. People who have developed with your motivational ideas would assist you to create a new world of success for you by becoming your greatest inspiration and assistant. So it is a good idea to develop a team of motivated people around you so that you all begin to think together and act jointly.

It is understood that some people give up very quickly and become inhibited. Their feelings and enthusiasm are double-locked and latched behind the surface personality they present and show to the world at large. They are frightened to make any error and if they do make an error they cannot come out of it easily.

To err is a human failing and one has to quickly forget about the errors they made in the past. This would be one of the greatest human achievements because it gives you a unique kind of freedom.

It is a release from negative feelings, a freedom from fear of making mistakes. So you learn to press on regardless.

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Remember that even the people who impress you as being perfect make mistakes, but they have managed to drop their mask and allow their creative self to fully participate in their life. They know that mistakes are part of our living and we must admit them but learn to rise above them to the status we deserve and aspire. We have to formulate our goals with enthusiasm, prepare ourselves to achieve that status and unlock our creative personality.

So the time has come for you to get ready, get set and go. See V for victory hanging right in front of you. This does not have to be tomorrow but now. You cannot afford to mourn over each word of your goal by over-thinking but you must quickly learn to cement your aims and objectives in your mind then act correctly and quickly. You should exercise self- criticism and it means you are on your way to success but you must remember to adjust daily to changing situations.

At the beginning of my high school days when I was facing some difficulties in my life I was told by my mentor to form a habit to become enterprising rather than having an empty mind. An empty mind is a devil’s residence I was told. I was encouraged to be a mind watcher and hunt for my assets by reactivating my success mechanism. I soon found out that everyday can be an inner revolution for me if I sat in a “think chair�. Then nothing can hold me back from moving ahead.

I realized that even the most successful people endure stress and problems. They too feel tense but when this happens they get their imagination give them a big lift. They use their past experiences to develop their present and move into their future. They do not sit and stare at the wall or the ceiling. They do not give up. They begin to find out new directions to get out of the situation.

Your most important reconstructive task is to turn your own doubts into your own confidence. Bring out and see the best in yourself and not the worst. Quickly look for and find a cure for your myopia.

Stress maybe part of our living but we must learn to quickly stand up to it without any delay. Procrastination means additional tension.

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It is very important that we must begin to turn our difficulties, problems and crisis into opportunities to progress. These if left to develop become our liabilities. So we must convert them into our assets. Many people like you have turned their mounting liabilities into beautiful assets.

William Wilberforce was enslaved by nature because he was a lame, a cripple and a deformed person who could hardly stand up on his feet but he freed millions of slaves of the world through his persistent writing and speeches. He had the power of words and turned his liabilities into assets.

Demosthenes was a Greek who could not speak but tried hard to pretend to speak before an audience. Born the son of a wealthy sword-maker, Demosthenes was orphaned at the age of seven. His father left him well provided for, but his legal guardians defrauded him and squandered his inheritance, causing him to seek retribution through the courts when he came of age.

One day he went to the riverside where he began picking up pebbles and putting them in his mouth one by one. Then he tried to talk by throwing the pebbles out of his mouth one by one. A time came when his persistence made him not only talk well but he became one of the greatest orators of Greece.

John Bunyan was a bad man who could be classed as a morally evil person. So the authorities put him in prison when they found him guilty of misdeeds. Hw was a person who mended pots and pans, a tinker. He was put in Bedford Goal for seven years on dry bread, dirty water and a stone as his pillow. These liabilities made a humble tinker into a great thinker. Bunyan wrote the famous religious classis “The Pilgrim’s Progress�. So he too was able to turn his liabilities into assets.

Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher had a liability too. His wife was cruel to him and she nagged a lot. Some men go med when they face such situation and drink themselves to death or to commit other crimes. However, Socrates chose another direction to overcome this difficulty. He went out on the street to talk to

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everyone. When the people told him that it was a lovely day he refuted this by arguing that if it were like this everyday then the umbrella men would go broke and starve. He became the brightest philosopher the world has ever seen. He too turned his liabilities into his assets.

There are many other people like the above who were able to turn their liabilities into assets only because they knew what was holding them back and then they were determined to get out of the cage.

Similar examples can be given for other species of animal kingdom.

Take an oyster. When a grain of sand gets into an oyster it has a liability within it because this grain of sand can kill it. The oyster quickly gets to working and wriggles strongly to expel the grain of sand from its body. Its brain is only one-millionth, as small as a pinhead but its instinct tells it to throw the liability out. However, when it knows that it cannot throw the grain of sand out, it turns that big liability into its asset. It clamps it down, closes up, polishes the grain of sand and converts it into a precious pearl.

An ant carrying a small straw into its hole meets a crevice, which it cannot cross so it puts the straw across the crevice, and continues its journey. It never gives up but turns its liability into its asset.

I have given you many reasons to overcome your problems and difficulties and these should enable you to see clearly what is holding you back from progress. Whatever you do but remember what Mathew 7:7 says, “Ask, and it shall be given, Seek, and ye shall find, Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.�

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Lecture 23

What Is Holding You Back?

A few of my scholar friends have said that we all are born with the world’s most powerful and unique tool, our brain that can be switched on to perform miracles for us. However, many individuals, homes and schools have managed to develop only a limited part of our brain. We can do a lot more by reading, listening, writing, playing, singing, drawing, thinking and doing.

Despite the above knowledge we all know that there are a few barriers in our lives that hold us back from progress. What is holding you back? I can give you a few of these for your consideration. Let us call them UPS. The first one is your Hang Ups. These are the excuses for your inertia. Your Hang Ups can be many but let me outline a few of them.

I am too old to do this work. I do not have good education for this job. I do not have any money for good living. I am the victim of racial discrimination. I cannot do this work because I am a woman.

These are our lame excuses and silly reasons. The best thing is to get out of your hang-ups and get determined to give every work a try with your best effort. Remember that no one is good at everything.

You need to do a lot of reading, listening and practicing to get rid of your hang-ups.

We all have the talent, our individual uniqueness, our drive, passion and personality to excel at something but we must find that something soon. If we are not able to find that something then we are faced with our second barrier called our Bang Ups. These are once upon a time jolts, difficulties and problems that we have had in our past. These Bang Ups become our greatest hurdles because we fail to forget them and they keep on bothering us. In fact such one-time problems cannot and will not affect us always if we are determined to forget them.

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What I am saying is that we should not let one of our old-time setbacks, defeats, failures and problems bother us and become our bang ups. How can such small one-time difficulty or old hurts make such a big noise and frighten us forever? We cannot let such slight bang ups of our life hold our progress.

I have heard some people say such foolish things as: “I will never get married in my life because my first partner was not faithful, honest and sincere with me.” Well one person can deceive you but not necessarily the next one you meet. This world is full of other honest people. You only have to take a re-look at your choice.

I have also heard people utter such disappointing statements as, “I will never trust any businessman because I was betrayed and deceived by a shopkeeper last year.” You may have had an unpleasant experience with one businessman in the past but that hurting situation cannot be enlarged out of proportion to become another of your bang ups, your loud cry of despair and your reason for holding up your progress.

Distasteful and damaging experiences do occur in our lives but we should never let them become our obstacles and hold us back from moving ahead. The least we can do is to avoid them and keeping marching ahead with additional determination with a hope that our next experience would be a lot better one for us.

In order to overcome and get rid of your bang ups you need to take your lessons from a canoe. A canoe will only take you across the stream if you took up the planks and began paddling the canoe. Only sitting down in the canoe and watching the water in the stream would not help you reach the other end. If you are a person who is easily disturbed by your bang ups then you must get up and do something positive to get over the problem. Learn to paddle your own canoe with greater strength and determination across the rough stream.

The famous English historian Thomas Carlyle wrote his first draft of the French Revolution and gave it to his neighbour John Stuart Mills to read and comment on it. After a week when Thomas Carlyle

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asked John Mills if he had any comments on the script, he was given a very sad story. John Mills said that he was sorry that his maid had used the scripts to start up the fire. All the labour of Carlyle was lost in the fire. Where would he get the energy to start again?

This was his bang up, his shock and his sorrow but one day Thomas Carlyle saw a mason constructing a brick wall, placing one brick at a time. He was immediately motivated to begin writing his draft again one page a day. When he finished the assignment it turned out to be better than the first try. His bang up could not hold him back from completing the book on French Revolution.

The third thing that holds people up is their Gang Ups. These are the various opposite forces that get together to oppose and go against us. During these tough times of stiff competition more than often our competitors, opponents and enemies have the tendency to get together and mount a program to defeat us and make things more difficult for us. This ganging up should not frighten us or it should not deter us or worry us to continue doing our work effectively and forge ahead as usual. These types of Gang Ups can drag us down if we are not careful and prepared to fight back with equal stamina.

Fighting competition is difficult and it requires a lot of strategic planning and courage. When our competitors get together and combine their forces to make us lose then we need to put up extra efforts to block these with additional opposing forces. The important thing is that we should not have any fears but face the opponents head-on and diplomatically.

A small merchant once operated a tiny grocery shop in the middle of a developing town. As part of commercial expansion on his left developed a huge up-market quality shopping complex and o his right came up a large department store. This small businessman was being crushed between the two giant commercial competitors.

On the day of opening, both the new competitors opened their doors with big banners that read “Grand Opening Sale�. The little merchant in the middle woke up in the morning and played it cool. He hung a

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sign over his doorway that read “Main Entrance”. This is how the little merchant overcame the ganging ups of the two large business people. He still felt that his little shop was the main entrance to the big world next door. So we all can beat the ganging up of others if we played it cool and are enthusiastic about what we do.

The fourth aspect that holds us up is our Rang Ups that we develop within us over the years. Our rang ups are our trophies, our prizes, our praises and our achievements. These are excellent medium for our personal human development but when we begin to think that we have had too many trophies, too many prizes, a lot of praise and tons of achievements in our life and we can now rest and slow down, then we begin to rust.

Best is not good enough during these difficult economic times because everyone expects a lot better results from us. After having a few victories, or winning some prizes we cannot say that we have had excellent results and have done our best so we stop working any harder. We cannot say, “I have reached my target” “ I have gone to the top of the ladder.” “ I do not need to work harder any more.”

This kind of attitude becomes our Rang Ups, which hold us back from progressing further.

We cannot afford to rest on our laurels. If we want to keep going towards our success we cannot think of retiring early. Only a few medals, awards, victories and prizes are not enough for us to be successful in life. If we want to stay on the bicycle of life then we have to keep paddling otherwise we are likely to fall down. Our wheelbarrow of life and work has to be lifted with a firm grip on the handles and pushed continuously.

No successful and enthusiastic person can afford to let the canoe of life and work wonder and float aimlessly in the sea of experience.

We have to keep paddling our canoe efficiently.

If wishes were horses not only the beggars but we all would ride on them. Our wishes need to be made of sterner stuff and be positive and then with our solid actions we would be able to make them come true. If we wish to achieve success we have to keep working

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harder and harder. There is no room for a plateau or slow down after we have had one or two successes. Continuous enthusiasm is the answer to overcoming our Rang Ups. So let us learn to prune now and we would gather beautiful rose buds sooner than later.

There are peaks after every plateau and the one who keeps going to new heights witnesses multiple achievements. We cannot afford to be satisfied with a few of our achievements.

What should we do to overcome all these Rang Ups? There are five ideas of Ultra Positive Steps (UPS).

1. We must Wake Up! Come alive and snap the cords of laziness. Break the chain of lethargy. Wake up and go.

2. We must Make Up our minds and act decisively now. Do not delay our right actions. Do it now. Stop procrastinating.

3. We must Shake Up those negative thoughts and develop our positive mental attitude for peak performance.

4. We must Break Up all the obstacles. barriers to our progress.

Shatter all the

5. We must Take Up all the crowning opportunities and achievements that are our destiny. Walk away with honors and strive for excellence.

When this happens then nothing should hold you back.

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Lecture 24

Being A Positive Thinker Makes Us Creative Writers around the world have given us many ways to build positive mental attitude within us but I have developed my own nine great steps. These steps have assisted me to develop my positive mental attitude.

Step 1: I try to say something positive to everyone I meet everyday no matter what the actual situation might be or how depressing the things are around me. Simple cheerful greetings and a smile goes a long way in building our positive mental attitude. Praising God for giving us a wonderful day, beautiful evening, bright and sunny morning and a happy moment can be an excellent start when we meet people. It is a wonderful day! What a beautiful evening! This is a great moment of happiness! You are having great time!

Then genuine praise of people could produce very positive mental attitude. Just say something positive to people you meet. You look smart today! Your hair do is very trendy this morning! You have a pretty dress! Great to see/meet you! You look very happy and energetic today!

Step 2: I try to see everything positive everyday in every situation. Just make a point of saying it out. That is an excellent comment. Your customer service is admirable today. Your help is very much appreciated. You played a good game today. He is making the best use of his time. This is good food. Sweet little baby! Very economical car! Etc If I can show my positive feelings with deep commitment and put it genuinely to people I interact with I would begin to see every problem of mine as my wonderful opportunity to get involved. All my

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difficulties would soon turn into smooth dealings and my joy would treble. This joy would certainly be pandemic.

Step 3: I try to develop a strong habit to think that whatever I am going to do today would definitely work to my advantage. All my plans would materialize and I would be able to complete all my tasks and responsibilities in time and with pleasure. Everyone would appreciate the work that I would do today. My work would turn out to be a quality-loaded activity.

All such internal feelings that I produce would definitely spread quickly around me and make the whole atmosphere vibrate with positive mental attitude. I would generate pleasure in the mind of people I interact and come into contact with.

Step 4: I nominate and appoint myself the leader of my own “Why Not Club�.

I frequently ask this question to get my work done. Why am I not getting what I want? Why am I not able to succeed? If people around me are not able to help me or they are not able to give me what I want or need then I ask the question. Why not? Having got my answer I go and get it myself.

Step 5: I activate every possible idea that comes into my mind with a DIN pin. DO IT NOW. There is no procrastination or no delay of action. If I want to achieve success then I know that there is no place for any delay and leaving the things till a later date.

Step 6: I have learnt to practice positive expectations. I expect that everything would happen as my plan. If I were determined, things would be done as per my command and enthusiasm. There is no

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question of taking a defeatist attitude. I expect good results from all my efforts.

Step 7: I practice, exercise and experience the power of positive persuasion.

I persuade myself, my friends and my family members to take positive stance and actions. I count my blessings and not my troubles. To develop my power of persuasion I understand and use the BUT principle. If I say, “I cannot run” then I should find out what I can do, “But I can walk”.

“I cannot hear but I can see” is another example.

“I cannot talk well but I can write clearly.”

Step 8: I have disciplined myself to become a positive reactionary. Life for me is 20% what happens to me and 80% how I react to what happens to me. Therefore my positive reaction is very important for me because my own positive reaction would make 80% of things happen, as I desire.

I found out that if my reaction to what is going to happen to me were positive then it is certain that it would happen, as I want it to happen.

Step 9: I always keep my positive emotions charged and get it recharged as the need arises. These emotions generate fresh enthusiasm within me. We human beings are rhythmically creative creatures full of positive emotions such as faith, hope, love, trust, belief, courage, joy, security, cheerfulness, confidence and admiration. It is advisable to use these.

Remember to say to yourself “NO” when the conditions are not right for action.

Say “SLOW” when the time and conditions are against you.

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Say, “GROW” when you are not ready and prepared to take an action.

Say, “GO” when everything is right for positive actions.

All these motivational suggestions depend on what kind of person you are. If you are a person who wants emotional fulfilment, is nonsharing, non caring, selfish and always ask questions like, “What is there for me?” or “Does it fit my plan?” This type of person would find it hard to bear any burden so they need to grow up.

On the other hand if you are a person who wants fulfilment in material things then even people become things for you. You have no emotions for other people. You need to grow up in different direction.

If you are a person who relates well to other people, gives service and wants to help others continuously and live for others by creating goodness for everyone then you are ready to go and take advantage of all the opportunities that lie ahead of you. We call you a mature person.

There is some aspect of each type in every person but we should aim to be the mature person. If this happens then a simple housewife becomes a homemaker; a lover becomes a good partner; a lawyer becomes a counsellor; a teacher becomes a personality builder; a doctor becomes a healer of people; a salesperson becomes a supplier of human needs; a businessman becomes a job opportunity creator and a capitalist becomes a builder of better society. Everyone can become that mature person.

Creative living is hard and trying but interesting. It turns a mature person into a great performer. Greatness for them means trying to be great. Confidence gives birth to creativity in every person. So let us become what nature wanted us to do by growing up and achieving higher results in as many things as possible.

We must learn to be free and knowledge allows us to get freedom. In order to develop the right knowledge we seek the company of six honest serving words- WHAT, WHY, WHEN, WHERE, WHO and

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HOW. When we frequently ask questions using these honest words we get helpful answers for our personal development.

Sound knowledge would take away our fear of making mistakes and our progress would be deeper and stronger. Gradually we can get the courage to leave the wharf to sail out to our destination with definite objectives. We jump the hurdles of fear and doubt to nourish our self-image and begin to demand results from ourselves. We promise a lot but deliver even more.

I want to leave you with this presentation that requires no further explanation.

Bill Gates’ Rules on Life for Kids of Any Age Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this! To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice.

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did NOT teach, and kids will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.

You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

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Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try cleaning the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

If you agree, take note. If you can read this - Thank a teacher!

Remember that everyone is potentially talented but in different ways and different fields. No one knows everything but let us try to widen our knowledge so that we can be a force to reckon with in the community. The greatest learning tool is the web when we can use the search engines such as Goggle, Bing, Yahoo and others to be up to date in any field.

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Let me finish off by telling you that the best three-letter word in any learner’s dictionary is ASK. So you have to ask everyone around you to enrich your life.

Good Luck.

After going through these lectures I am of the opinion that you will be a changed personality.

I believe that many of you will have better ideas to add to these presentations.

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Helpful Attachments What Could Be Our Key To Success At Our Workplace S–

Sense of direction must be right. See yourself Improving everyday. Aim at worthwhile goal.

U–

Understanding. Uproot the garbage of despair cluttering your mind.

C–

Courage. Co-operate with your big self.

C–

Compassion. Convince yourself that you can be the winner.

E–

Esteem. Encourage the good in you.

S–

Self – Confidence. Select goals within your limitations.

S–

Self-Acceptance. Self-discovery and secure your tomorrow with your self-belief of today.

What Are Some Of Our Liabilities?

Revenge

We think we have been wronged and when we begin to dwell on this for a lifetime we begin to wrong ourselves.

Envy

When we begin to envy those who are doing better than us we create a liability for ourselves. It is better to build our own self-image independently without comparing it with others.

Sulkiness

Rather than showing annoyance against others for slight causes, it

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Elimination from Life

better to set our own goals to move forward to making us better and more creative.

We should never isolate us from society and retire from life.

Narrow-mindedness

When we develop an open mind we quickly learn to renounce all mental and spiritual short sightedness.

Temper

Temper is a sickness and one of the worst enemies of good people and when we learn to control this hairtrigger temper we can definitely move toward a new exalted status as a professional human being.

Mistakes

We all make mistakes because no one is perfect. We should learn to forgive and rise above all our mistakes.

Hatred

Hatred is a very strong human feeling and it would always benefit us if we stayed away from it. The person who hates others dislikes himself but the person who respects others learns to respect everyone.

Emotional Negligence

Turning all your negative feeling to positive goals is possible. You have to refuse to wallow in your negative ideas and steer clearly toward positive thinking.

Tension

Relaxation is far better than to be tense because any tension is a debilitating habit. Get on with your work regardless.

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Symptoms Of Failure F–

Frustration

A–

Aggression that is misdirected

I–

Insecurity

L–

Loneliness

U–

Uncertainty

R–

Resentment

E–

Emptiness

Turn Your Failure Into Success F–

Fear is a human emotion; use it constructively to reach your goal. If you fall start it over with new courage.

A–

Agitation should be replaced with atonement, and then improvement.

I–

Inadequacy can be overcome if you set your goal everyday.

Move toward them with added vigour and feel you are somebody special.

L–

Leaving things for tomorrow is evasion. Today is the day for you to act.

U–

Unconditional surrender of your self-image should never be accepted.

R–

Retreat can be arrested if you learn to cope with your negative feelings and reactivate your success mechanism.

E–

Eviction is reversible, redeem yourself and return to your true sense of worth.

114 Dr Ram Lakhan Prasad

Motivating the Unmotivated

Failure Means An Inadequate Self-Image F–

Fear brings about futility or worthlessness and we lack ability to succeed.

A–

Agitation, born of resentment, leads to elimination

I–

Inadequacy makes you retreat from life

L–

Leaving everything for tomorrow makes your score for today zero

U–

Unconditional surrender of your self-image is destructive

R–

Retreat to nothingness makes the climb to success twice as hard

E–

Eviction of self is like total obliteration

115 Dr Ram Lakhan Prasad

Motivating the Unmotivated

Expect A Miracle In Your Life It is the ultimate responsibility of all enlightened human beings to look for the miracle of our potential. We came to this world to succeed not to fail. Each of us is a miracle if we can spell the word:

M–

Move toward a creative day with vigour.

I–

Imagination to be zeroed in on a productive day.

R–

Relaxation in pursuit of the BIG YOU.

A–

Adjustment to the realities of each day.

C–

Compassion for yourself and others.

L–

Living and enjoying now.

E–

Encouraging others to live creatively too.

We can stay young by thinking young. Good humour and good will know no age. You’re neither young nor old, but a solid human being capable of many miracles. Faith and belief are your wings. Flapping them you can soar through any crises to a destination of a rich creative living.

Since our success is measured by our happiness let us be happy and enjoy our work and life.

Dr Ram L Prasad.

116 Dr Ram Lakhan Prasad